The Virginia Defamation Law Blog
When an individual is publicly accused of misconduct, reporting on the existence of such allegations—without more—does not necessarily give rise to a claim for defamation. This principle is not just a matter of common sense; it is a well-established rule in Virginia defamation law, where courts require that allegedly defamatory implications be tied to the actual words used by the speaker or writer and reasonably drawn from those words. The Court of Appeals of Virginia reaffirmed this principle in Alexander v. The Martin Agency, decided September 9, 2025. In a decision affirming the dismissal of a defamation claim, the court made clear that merely referring to the fact that allegations were made—without asserting or implying their truth—is not actionable as defamation.
The opinion describes the facts of the case as follows. Joe Alexander is the former Chief Creative Officer at The Martin Agency. He resigned in late 2017 after the company received multiple sexual harassment complaints against him. These events were widely covered in the media, with various reports describing the nature of the allegations and linking his departure to the resulting scandal. In the wake of Alexander’s resignation, The Martin Agency hired Kristen Cavallo as CEO, a move broadly celebrated as a turning point for the company’s culture and public image. In 2019, the agency reposted on its website three articles that praised Cavallo’s leadership and discussed the broader cultural shift following Alexander’s departure. The articles referenced the prior sexual harassment allegations and described them as part of the backdrop to Cavallo’s hiring and leadership. One article referred to Alexander as having “behaved badly,” and another quoted Cavallo as saying, “Don’t waste a good crisis,” in reference to the company’s transformation.
None of the articles claimed that the sexual harassment allegations against Alexander were true. Nevertheless, Alexander sued the agency, Cavallo, and its parent company for defamation, claiming that although the articles didn’t make that claim expressly, they described the allegations in a way that implied they were true. The trial court sustained the defendants’ demurrer, finding that the statements were not “capable of a defamatory meaning” and that they were “substantially accurate” in reporting that allegations had been made. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
Alexander acknowledged that the articles did not defame him directly but attempted to frame his case as one of defamation by implication. The court pointed out, however, that to be actionable, any defamatory implication must be “reasonably drawn from the words actually used.” (See my earlier discussion of Webb v. Virginian-Pilot Media Companies). The court emphasized that innuendo cannot “introduce new matter, nor extend the meaning of the words used, or make that certain which is in fact uncertain.” In other words, plaintiffs cannot rely on strained interpretations or emotionally driven readings of otherwise accurate reports to support a defamation claim. If the only reasonable interpretation of a given statement is one that is substantially true, then the statement will not be actionable. And that was the case here: Alexander’s own complaint acknowledged that 
allegations of sexual harassment had been made against him. While the articles at issue commented on the scandal and praised Cavallo’s leadership in its aftermath, they did not assert that Alexander actually committed the misconduct he had been accused of.
The court distinguished the case from Pendleton v. Newsome, where school officials issued statements that could be reasonably interpreted to imply that a mother (the plaintiff) bore responsibility for her child’s death. In Pendleton, unlike in Alexander’s case, the plaintiff was the “sole and unmistakable target of any innuendo.” By contrast, the plaintiffs in Webb and Alexander were not the subjects of any reasonably-drawn defamatory implications. Webb and Alexander asked the court to draw inferences that weren’t justified by the language actually used by the defendants, using strained interpretations. For that reason, their defamation claims were dismissed.
The court also noted that the statements at issue were literally true (and truth defeats a defamation claim). It discussed the federal case of Dangerfield v. WAVY Broadcasting, Inc., 228 F. Supp. 3d 696 (E.D. Va. 2017), where the court held that reporting on the existence of allegations is not defamatory if the report is accurate in describing the fact that the allegations were made. In Dangerfield, the plaintiff sued after being described in a news report as having been “accused of rape.” Although he denied the allegation, the court dismissed the suit because the reporting accurately described the contents of a warrant. The same reasoning applied in Alexander: the reporting on the existence of sexual harassment complaints, while potentially damaging to Alexander’s reputation, was not false and therefore was not actionable.
The Alexander decision is a clear reaffirmation of protections afforded to journalists and publishers who report on public controversies, particularly when doing so in a manner that does not overstate facts or assert unproven conclusions. It is also significant for employers who, like The Martin Agency, face public scrutiny and must respond by explaining organizational changes, sometimes in connection with allegations made against former personnel. Courts applying Virginia law will not stretch the meaning of words beyond their “plain and natural” interpretation to find defamatory meaning where none exists. The burden remains on the plaintiff to show that any implied defamatory meaning is both reasonable and grounded in the actual text.