Internet defamation of character is rampant. There are websites out there strictly devoted to slamming your reputation online. What can you do about it? What are your options when you are the target of some third-party rant about how you’re a bad person, attacking your reputation or otherwise making false allegations a fact about you, your company or your business? Look, I’m going to be honest with you. These are very challenging issues. The first thing that a good defamation of character attorney will tell you is that you need to really be careful about understanding the difference between your emotional reaction and what rights you may have under defamation law.

It always hurts to be the target of some unwanted attack online when it comes to your own personal reputation. A good Internet attorney will help you understand to remove yourself from the emotional component and take a good, hard look at the legal aspects of what has been posted. The first thing that you need to understand, the first thing that a good defamation attorney is going to tell you is that you have to make sure that what has been posted is, in fact, a false statement of fact as opposed to the person’s opinion about you.

Welcome to Defamation Law Radio. Internet defamation of character is as easy to perpetuate as a blog post, Facebook update, rating submission, or a forum comment.  Your online reputation is measured by the websites return as Google search results.  Do you know what people are saying and writing about you?

Enrico Schaefer: Internet defamation of character is rampant. There are websites out there strictly devoted to slamming your reputation online. What can you do about it? What are your options when you are the target of some third-party rant about how you’re a bad person, attacking your reputation or otherwise making false allegations a fact about you, your company or your business? Look, I’m going to be honest with you. These are very challenging issues. The first thing that a good defamation of character attorney will tell you is that you need to really be careful about understanding the difference between your emotional reaction and what rights you may have under defamation law.

It always hurts to be the target of some unwanted attack online when it comes to your own personal reputation. A good Internet attorney will help you understand to remove yourself from the emotional component and take a good, hard look at the legal aspects of what has been posted. The first thing that you need to understand, the first thing that a good defamation attorney is going to tell you is that you have to make sure that what has been posted is, in fact, a false statement of fact as opposed to the person’s opinion about you.

Now, this is a very complicated area of defamation law. What is a false statement of fact? What is a personal opinion that is first amendment protected? Very challenging issues, and there’s often a blend between the two in the context of the post. The defamation attorney’s going to take a look at what was posted and what was said about you, and make that very early determination as to whether or not you may have a colorable claim of defamation under relevant law.

Your options, if, in fact, these are false statements of fact that have been posted, are numerous. The website owner may be the person who actually engaged in defamation against you and posted the false statement of fact. If that’s the case, we have a variety of techniques as defamation attorneys, to be able to identify the person who owns or controls that website. If, in fact, it is user-generated content on the website, the website owner may have absolutely nothing to do with what was posted. Some third person actually posted the information on that website.

The thing that you need to know in those situations under defamation law is that under the Communications Decency Act, in Section 230, Immunity, the website owner may have absolutely no exposure, or liability or responsibility to remove that post– even if it, in fact, is defamatory. So, you need to take a hard look at what your rights are against the website owner, you need to see if you can actually identify the person who posted the defamatory statement, and then you need to understand fully, what your options are. A good defamation assessment will help you understand what the landscape looks like and what your options may be.

My name is defamation law attorney, Enrico Schaefer. We’ll see you next time.

You’ve been listening to Defamation Law Radio, where defamation of character, slander, and libel are always the topic of the day.  Whether you are a defamation attorney or a client, we are the number one resource for all your defamation questions.

Welcome to Defamation Law Radio, my name is Defamation Attorney Enrico Schaefer. Today, we’re going to talk about what is defamation of character. Look, if you think that someone has engaged in libel or slander against you on the internet, you need an internet lawyer to help you analyze the situation. Because I’ll tell you what, it’s always emotional, am I right? It’s always emotional. You think that you’ve been wronged, someone is saying something really nasty about you, but I got some good news and some bad news. The bad news is not everything is defamation of character just because it hurts. The good news is that if it does prove to be defamation of character, you do have legal rights. And a good defamation of character attorney can help you, perhaps, remove the content from the internet or bring a lawsuit against the person who published the defamation and information. If it is written, then it is libel. If it spoken, it is slander. So, what do you have to prove in order to prove defamation of character?

Well, the first thing you need to prove is that someone made a defamatory statement about you. That is to say that they said something or wrote something and put it, in our instance, on the internet. A statement is defamatory if it tends to harm your reputation or character. So, that’s usually the easy part because you wouldn’t be calling me as a defamation law attorney if you didn’t think it hurt you; if you didn’t think that it made you look like a bad person. So, a statement is defamatory if it tends to hurt your reputation. If someone who saw the statement or heard the statement would think less of you.

Defamation per se is a separate category where you don’t even have to prove that it harms your reputation. It’s defamation as a matter of law. These things usually having to do with things regarding sexual diseases. In many states, if it’s an attack on your business or small company, then those things can be defamation per se. That’s a topic for another day.

So, what is your reputation? Well, reputation is how people think about you in your relevant community. You have to have character in order to sue someone for a reputation injury, in order to sue someone for defamation of character. If you have an incredibly poor reputation, you’re not going to have much of a defamation claim, okay. There’s something called, like, a libel-proof plaintiff. A libel-proof plaintiff is someone whose character is so bad that there really isn’t much you could say about them that’s going to hurt enough in order to give rise to a lawsuit for defamation of character.

The statement also has to be published to other people. Usually not an issue in my business people as an internet law attorney, you wouldn’t be calling me unless your defamation of character – the statement that you’re complaining about – was published on the internet somewhere, so that’s pretty easy to establish.

Then we get to the more difficult elements. You have to show that the person who published this knew or should have known the communication was false. That the statement was a false statement of fact. So, if someone innocently says something really bad about you, that’s not going to set you up for a defamation lawsuit. If, in fact, someone said something that they knew or should have known was false, then you’re in the fairway. Then you very well may have a defamation of character claim against that person.

How do you prove that someone knew or should have known that the communication is false? It’s always a fact-intensive issue. Sometimes they admit it. Sometimes they just made it up. Sometimes didn’t exercise reasonable care before they published it. There are all kinds of things that you have to be thinking about here, but they’re all fact-specific, and every case is different.

Now, what is the standard of liability? It can be negligence. It can be heightened standard. It could be recklessness. It could be intentional. There are many variations here depending on who you are as a person, as the plaintiff in the case.

Those are the things that you’re going to have to prove in order to show defamation of character. A good defamation of character attorney can help you analyze the situation, as well as help you get by the emotional impact that this nasty thing has caused and tell you whether or not you really have a cause of action for defamation, whether or not there are remedies, and options available to you. For example, having the defamatory content removed or, potentially, to send a threat letter against the person who posted the defamatory statement or, in some instances, file a lawsuit for defamation of character against the person who published the information that they knew or should have known was false and would tend to harm your reputation and character as a person.

That’s all for today. I’m Defamation of Character Attorney Enrico Schaefer, we’ll see you next time.

You’ve been listening to Defamation Law Radio, where defamation of character, slander, and libel are always the topic of the day. Whether you are a defamation attorney or a client, we are the number one resource for all your defamation questions.

We all live in Glasshouses, so don’t throw stones

• Generally Defamation requires that the party or person doing the defaming has published (or at least communicated to a third party) disparaging comments or graphics concerning the person or persons who alleges they have been defamed, which tend to lower him or her in the estimation of others, cause him or her to be shunned or avoided, or expose him/her to hatred, ridicule or contempt. Oral statements are slander, more permanent statements are libel.

• There are many defences – the statements were substantially true or privileged (ie; made in the course of legal or Parliamentary proceedings) or amount to fair comment on a matter of public interest or were published innocently.

• Defamation proceedings are, as a rule, extremely expensive (costs in the hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions). Therefore, suing for libel or slander tends to be made by celebrities.