Defamation

A New York federal judge said in a strong and firm opinion released this week that an article written by former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer about financial and business crimes in the state is not libelous because it is not “of and concerning” the plaintiff.

John Hoff did not lie. Because of that, the Minneapolis blogger will not be held liable for the firing of a University of Minnesota employee.

A three-member panel of the Minnesota Court of Appeals on Monday overturned a $60,000 award against Hoff, a blogger who publishes “The Adventures of Johnny Northside.”

A Virginia trial court threw out a $3 million libel verdict against a local newspaper, finding that a local school official failed to show that the allegedly defamatory article was published with actual malice.

An appeal in a defamation case against the late journalist Andrew Breitbart will proceed after a federal appeals court denied a motion to have it dismissed.

Shirley Sherrod, a former official in the Obama administration, sued Breitbart last year, alleging that two writers from his website, BigGovernment.com, defamed her in a YouTube video, which she said unfairly edited a speech she made. Breitbart, a known conservative commentator, died in March.

The Rhode Island Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of a defamation claim brought by a restaurant owner against two journalists for their coverage of a 2009 "off the record" event at his restaurant where attendees included politicians, businesspeople and press members.

The Texas Supreme Court declined to rule on a libel appeal brought against two Texas newspapers by alleged child abusers last Friday because a lower court judge previously accepted a bribe to decide against the publications. The high court also ruled void the trial judge's decision.

A California appeals court ruled Friday that a malicious prosecution lawsuit against a Los Angeles-based attorney may proceed, reversing a lower court's holding that the state's anti-SLAPP statute protected the lawyer.

A federal court in Buffalo said last week that peer-reviewed journals, not courtrooms, are the proper place to vet scientific disputes. A libel claim brought by ONY, Inc., against the Journal of Perinatology for a negative study of an ONY pharmaceutical product was dismissed.

The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a defamation suit over online accusations of child sexual abuse could still proceed, even though the plaintiff could not show he was harmed.

The decision upheld a 2010 appeals court ruling that New Jersey First Amendment attorneys hoped would lead to a change in the law by the state's Supreme Court.

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed by a former employee of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) over comments a spokesman made to The New York Times.