In most cases, it won’t be actionable to call for the resignation of a public official or to question that person’s ethics or professionalism. The First Amendment is intended to protect robust debate over the performance of government officials, and statements like these are generally considered to be non-actionable expressions…
To be actionable as defamation in Virginia, the words used must be more harmful to a person’s reputation than a common insult or an accusation that most people would consider harmless or unimportant in evaluating a person’s character. Defamatory words are those which “tend so to harm the reputation of…
Defamation law in Virginia and Washington, D.C. is identical in most material respects. Choice-of-law principles usually won’t make much of a difference to the outcome of a defamation case. Both Virginia and D.C. follow the general principles of defamation law that are recognized throughout the United States. There are, however,…
In Virginia, injunctions are considered an extraordinary remedy and, due to First Amendment concerns, are generally not available to enjoin a person from speaking. Known as “prior restraints,” injunctions against defamatory speech are disfavored and bear a heavy presumption against validity. The Supreme Court has written that “a free society…
In cases of defamation per se in Virginia, successful plaintiffs can recover “presumed” damages even if they are unable to prove exactly how their reputations were harmed and to what extent. For example, defamatory statements that impute to the plaintiff an unfitness to perform the duties of her job would…
For a statement to be actionable as defamation per quod, it must have resulted in damages to the plaintiff. (See Landmark Communications, Inc. v. Macione, 230 Va. 137 (1985)). In actions for libel and slander in Virginia, a plaintiff must prove the quantum of his damages unless the words at…
Defamatory statements falling into certain categories deemed particularly damaging to one’s reputation are considered defamatory “per se” and may be compensable even without proof of reputational harm. False accusations of morally reprehensible criminal activity are a common example of this “per se” form of defamation. As the Virginia Supreme Court…
Another federal judge faced with interpreting Virginia’s insulting-words statute has found that (1) a face-to-face confrontation is not required, and (2) if the words at issue are defamatory per se, then they automatically satisfy the requirements of the statute. The case is Christen Waddle v. Aundrea Claughton, currently pending in…
In a defamation per se case, the jury will be instructed that it may presume damages and award a monetary recovery to the plaintiff even in the absence of any evidence of specific harm caused by the defamatory statements. This goes against the general rule that juries cannot award damages…
We lawyers like to write about two types of libel and slander: defamation per se, and defamation per quod. Using Latin terms makes us sound smart, we think. Unfortunately, most of us don’t know what we’re talking about. The problem isn’t that the lawyers are stupid, but that the courts use…