Defamation

A federal judge dismissed a $5 million libel lawsuit by a former tax preparer against a Virginia television station that allegedly referred to him as “unscrupulous.”

The special motion to strike provided by D.C.'s anti-SLAPP law, which became effective in March of last year, is unavailable to defendants sued in federal court, the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. ruled last week.

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled that a defamation suit filed by a high school basketball coach against about a dozen critics is not subject for dismissal under Illinois’ Citizen Participation Act, a statue aimed to prevent Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP).

The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled this week that the Baltimore City Paper was protected by reporting privileges when it published information from the court record of a grisly, local murder trial -- information not used during the trial and potentially implicating another person not tried for the crime.

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals set a precedent for balancing a speaker's right to anonymous speech with a plaintiff's right to pursue a defamation claim on January 12, when it ruled that a trade association didn’t have to disclose the name of an anonymous tipster.

Earlier this week the Georgia Supreme Court declined to review a lower court decision in the long-running libel case against The Atlanta Journal-Constitution filed by Richard Jewell, who was wrongfully accused of the 1996 Olympic Park bombing, and carried on by his family since his death in 2007.

A Montana blogger has been ordered to pay $2.5 million in defamation damages after a federal judge said she would have to be working for a mainstream media organization in order to qualify for protections afforded journalists.

The judgment against Crystal Cox, a self-proclaimed investigative blogger, arose from an allegedly defamatory statement about Obsidian Finance Group, LLC, and its senior principal, Kevin D. Padrick. The statement was posted on Cox's website bankruptcycorruption.com.

In what may be the largest defamation verdict in Minnesota history, a jury found that a Minneapolis TV news station acted with "constitutional malice" and awarded a naturopathic healer $1 million.

The jury found that the ABC news affiliate, KSTP, acted with reckless disregard for the truth when it ran a report more than two years ago about healer Susan Anderson and advice she allegedly gave her client, Cheryl Blaha.

An Academy Award-winning film that addressed “an issue of paramount importance in the Iraq war” is protected speech about a public issue, a federal judge in California ruled yesterday, dismissing a U.S. serviceman's lawsuit alleging “The Hurt Locker” unlawfully benefited from the use of his identity without his consent.