Balough
December 14, 2013
A law firm that believes it was defamed has the right in discovery to find out if the defendants have any knowledge about the internet posting. The Seventh Circuit found that the district court erred in not ruling on a request to compel the defendants to disclose if they had any information in their possession […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
Telling a future employer why your former employer fired you does not create a claim for compelled self-defamation. The plaintiff in the case, an attorney, argued that she was compelled to tell future employers that her previous employer had told her she was fired because she mishandled cases, violated the attorney code of ethics, and […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
A mean-spirited email send off commenting on a fired newspaper publisher was not libelous because it contained only opinions, not objectively verifiable facts. An Illinois appellate court affirmed the dismissal of a libel action brought by the former publisher of the Jerusalem Post. The newspaper publisher contended that the statements in an email from the […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
A divided California Supreme Court found that a defendant can be enjoined from repeating certain statements after a trial court found the statements were defamatory. The court concluded that the injunction was not prohibited by either the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment or California’s state constitution. The majority opinion found that “an injunction issued following a trial […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
An attorney who sent a letter to an employer accusing an employee of stabbing an inflatable rat cannot be sued for defamation because the letter was sent to a potential litigant, an Illinois appellate court found. The bar applies even if the attorney did not investigate whether the accusation was true or false. Kevin Atkinson sued […]
Balough
December 13, 2013
Writing in a book that two reputed mob figures were “semijubilant” after paying a Chicago attorney $1 million in cash skimmed from a casino to represent them in a criminal case cannot be innocently constructed but rather is libel per se, the Illinois Supreme Court found. In the book, Double Deal, the authors discussed the […]
Balough
December 13, 2013
An attorney can sue an insurance adjustor for libel when the adjustor said that the attorney “just takes people’s money” and that his clients receive less than what the insurance company offered. The court reasoned that the statements were more than mere opinion. The Virginia Supreme Court reversed the trial court that had thrown out the […]
Balough
December 13, 2013
A person who republishes potentially libelous statements of another on the Internet is immune from being sued, the California Supreme Court has ruled. Under the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) Section 230, the court found that any Internet user who posts an article from another is protected from being sued unless the party injured […]
Balough
December 13, 2013
A flyer in a judicial race “full of disparagement and innuendo unbefitting a campaign for judicial office” cannot support a claim for libel or tortuous interference with a prospective economic advantage, an Illinois appellate court found. The flyer was distributed by the Illinois Coalition for Jobs, Growth and Prosperity and was mailed to voters in […]
Balough
December 13, 2013
Comparing your goods to your competitor’s as the difference between dried cream cheese and real Parmigiano is not libelous but saying your competitor’s integrity is the same as the Iraq information officer can be libelous, an Illinois appellate court said. The issue arose over an advertisement in the Chicago Sun-Times by Cosmo’s Designer Direct, Inc. […]
