Defamation

An Ohio county prosecutor is suing the Sandusky Register for defamation, claiming the paper fabricated a story saying a law enforcement officer testified the attorney had used cocaine.

Professional golfer John Daly's defamation lawsuit against The Florida Times-Union has been dismissed by a Jacksonville judge, the newspaper reports.

Maryland’s highest court on Friday ruled that a newspaper company does not have to reveal the identities of three people who commented anonymously on a newspaper-owned community forum Web site.

In upholding the right to anonymous speech, the court also for the first time adopted a standard for lower courts to apply when dealing with anonymous defendants in defamation cases.

The judge who issued a $3.5 million libel judgment against a Pennsylvania newspaper has been accused by the paper’s lawyers of accepting bribes to favor the plaintiffs, just a week after he stepped down from the bench and pleaded guilty to accepting millions of dollars in kickbacks.

Truth is no longer a defense in some private-figure libel cases in Massachusetts where the "ill will" of the speaker is established -- at least according to a federal appellate opinion issued last week. The court was interpreting Massachusetts state law, not federal law.

A New Jersey appellate court ruling that limited the defense of the fair report privilege has been temporarily suspended by the state’s Supreme Court.

Though the court has not determined if it will hear the appeal, the one-paragraph order it issued Tuesday suspends the effect of the appellate ruling in the meantime, essentially returning the law for now to the more media-friendly state it was in.

A charter school official is suing The Philadelphia Inquirer for defamation, the paper reports.

A state court in New York dismissed a libel lawsuit last month against a free bi-weekly newspaper that published an anonymous letter alleging that a local developer was bribing officials.

The developer, Dean Gitter, sued the Phoenicia Times after the paper published a letter in March by an unnamed writer, The Daily Freeman reported. The letter alleged that Gitter, who has proposed building a large resort in the Catskills region, paid lobbyists to bribe officials.

A supermodel has demanded that Google release the identity of a blogger who called her a "skank" and an "old hag", reports the New York Daily News.

Liskula Cohen filed the defamation suit in a New York state court, and asked the judge to issue a court order requiring Google to identify the person she says defamed her on a blog operated by its Blogger.com service.

A New York Times story about a rumored affair between Sen. John McCain and Washington lobbyist Vicki Iseman has landed the paper in a $27 million dollar legal battle, The Times reported.