Credit: Devon Yu/Adobe Stock The Defamation-Proof Plaintiff: Two Recent Decisions of Interest
The author discusses two recent cases, one involving Lenny Dykstra, and the other Roy Moore and Sasha Baron Cohen, to explain how there are certain instances where, no matter what the speaker says about the plaintiff, the plaintiff cannot claim defamation. "When the plaintiff already has an undesirable reputation, or when the plaintiff signs a prospective release of defamation liability, the speaker is essentially free to defame."
August 11, 2022 at 10:00 AM
6 minute read
It is often said that truth is an absolute defense to liability in a defamation case. A well-known variant of this is when the speaker believes in good faith that the statement is true even if it later turns out to be false. As the Supreme Court famously held in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 280 (1964), when the plaintiff is a public figure and the speaker made the false statement without "malice"—i.e., without knowledge of its falsity—there can be no liability.
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