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A QuizLaw Lesson in Defamation
One of the most common types of lawsuits, especially in celebrity circles, involves the tort of defamation. So, what is defamation? Basically, it’s a false statement about someone else that causes that person harm. To prove defamation, a litigant must show that the statement made was false, that it was made to a third party, and that there was an injury to the plaintiff’s reputation. The two forms of defamation are slander and libel, which are often confused with one another.
So, let’s break it down. First of all, slander is oral defamation – it’s easy to remember because you can equate “slander” with “saying.” An example of slander would be a defamation lawsuit brought by Stephanie Stephens against the former “Friends” and “Joey” star, Matt LeBlanc. In her lawsuit, Stephens claims that LeBlanc “said” to an unspecified person that she was sexually aggressive, gave him an unwanted lap dance, and engaged him in a night of sexual debauchery. If true, then LeBlanc not only had one helluva night, but this defamation suit would be unsuccessful because truth is a defense against defamation. For the record, LeBlanc’s actual statement, in part, was as follows: “She was in my face, pushing her breasts into me and grabbing my hands to go all over her body. She was telling me to caress her.” In other words, LeBlanc asserted, as Defamer puts it, that he was attacked by a stripper’s ass — a necessary claim when one’s marriage is on the rocks.
Libel, on the other hand, is a form of “written” defamation. A fine example of libel would be the defamation lawsuit recently brought against California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. In that lawsuit, a British television personality, Anna Richardson, claimed that the Guhvernator grabbed her breast. More specifically, Richardson said that during an interview: “He pulled me on his knee, saying ‘I want to know if your breasts were real.’ Before I knew what was happening, he circled my nipple with his finger and gave it a squeeze. He then said, ‘Yeah, they’re real’.”
Obviously, if Schwarzenegger had claimed that Richardson’s breasts were fake when they were in fact actually real, then Richardson might have had the grounds for a defamation lawsuit right there. But that’s not the case in this story. Instead, the libel suit came from printed statements made by Arnold and two of his aides, claiming that Richardson had made up her allegations just to harm Schwarzenegger’s career. Like the LeBlanc case above, the aides also claimed that Richardson forced herself upon Arnold, practically demanding that he grope her. One will never know whether Richardson could have proven libel in this case, however, as she and Schwarzenegger settled the lawsuit late last week for undisclosed terms.
