How to talk about your family/parents without saying if it&#39;s your Mother or Father specifically? Any legal issues for writing about your parent(s)? Reformulated in other's words (thank you commenters, mods please preserve the comments as originally posted so you can read the source), my question is: (A) Is referring to a parent specifically defamation? (B) Is defaming an ambiguously defined parent still defamation? (C) Would it be a problem to talk about your parents? (D) Why would that be defamation to talk about your parents? (E) Do lawyers use ambiguous terms such as &quot;a family member&quot; mostly when the detail is irrelevant or they don't know enough about the matter they assess or litigate? Will they look ridiculous if they limit themselves to &quot;family member&quot; in legal cases? In my own words, as originally asked with my anecdote (which led to the great reformulations), same meaning as (A) to (E) before: I'm an American who at a French youth-in-difficulty shelter in Montreal was invited to talk to and ask the in-shelter Free Legal Aid Clinic with English law students from McGill University my title question, after I had asked before to a counselor the title question. Specifically of course defamation (or libel, slander, etc, may be especially valid if they will still be living too) are legitimate legal issues (besides social/psychological issues) in not wanting to express the words Mom/Dad/Mother/Father (and not to mention their name[s]) at will, though I've been told the &quot;truth&quot; of the matter gives creedance/freedom if to fair use of the words (yet proof of family issues can vary, I could not exactly ask a publisher to clear and vet, basically speaking about 'family with fact' when encountering emotional/psychological/verbal issues is daunting/troubling [the words Mom/Dad remain important as much as sounding implicatingly litigatable {even the hint/whiff of knowing who/which parent can be drastic}, and e.g. verbal abuse is not readily valued verbatim for &quot;truth&quot;/fact]), I still know and worry the words are triggering and have long suffered to speak and talk about family given the variables said. I feel (from personal experience) there is a legal grey area where speaking about parent(s) specifically is judged somewhat and would appreciate clarification if there is any legal precedent (for other written works, the general signal I read is to avoid real names mostly, how normally you may be required to fictionalize characters, but I find that difficult if the names are Mom/Dad—is that normal and because of the law?), and if my being younger or older mattered (being 17 or 18 matters if naming parents?) for using the words &quot;Mother&quot; and &quot;Father&quot; openly, say with my own public social media network writing for example if I mention family and or family issues. Given the nature of how I was referred by my counselor/intervenor/social worker to Legal Aid for the title of my question (almost the exact words I asked originally), I figured appropriate to ask here for a second opinion. Relevant US/CA/international law or precedent/examples would be good to start first with. It may help to remind readers the title question is written clearly, even if the anecdote of my real, detailed experience is clearly difficult for some people to relate, so to repeat: (F) How do you talk about your family/parents without saying if it's your Mother or Father specifically? Any legal issues for writing about your parent(s)? (G) Are there any legal issues for writing about your parent(s)?
Any legal issues for writing about your parent(s)? No. Furthermore, the answer you got from the Free Legal Aid Clinic is wrong. There is no need for pseudonyms or ambiguities such as &quot;a family member&quot;. As long as your statements of fact are truthful, identifying actual individuals in your narrative is lawful (this applies to US as well as Canada defamation law). A word of caution, though: Your post reflects deficiencies in how you explain yourself. This has more to do with your way of articulating ideas than the possibility that English might not be your first language. Although it is palpable from your post that you do not intend to defame someone, reading it raises some concern that you might inadvertently convey a defamatory falsehood when you talk about matters which are understandably sensitive. Knowing how to transmit your message clearly and accurately is far more important --and safer from a legal standpoint-- than avoiding ironic acronyms such as &quot;A m o m f&quot;.
This is a valid question that comes up from time to time. The answer can be a bit fuzzy and the law on questions 1 and 2 is often not well spelled out. This answer refers only to U.S. legal history without much customization for Maryland in particular, so I may omit references to some relevant Maryland specific statutes or cases of which I am not aware. Often there is no statutory guidance or there is only inconclusive or vague statutory guidance. There is often also little appellate case law precedent to provide guidance. The issue comes up far more often than it is litigated, in part, because these issues tend to become moot before they can be resolved by a precedent creating appellate court, and because statutes addressing the issue tend to be recent and not yet litigated, or non-existent. These issues are often highly time sensitive and don't have an economic prize to spend money litigating over are often not litigate to the maximum extent. Court rulings when cases are presented to them often depend a lot on the procedural context of the way the issue comes up, how the issue is framed by the litigants, and upon the court's gut feelings and upon unwritten social norms. For example, one recent case involving the ability of a priest to visit a man who was sick with COVID-19 in a Maryland hospital notwithstanding hospital visitation policies was resolved in the context of a complaint to the Maryland Office of Civil Rights and would not be generally applicable to an intrafamily dispute as opposed to an allegation of religion based discrimination. The hospital's opinion is often given outsized weight, since it is a &quot;neutral&quot; party in a family dispute, has a vested interesting in having litigation resolved that is more economic than that of the family members, and is likely to have counsel that is most familiar with the issues presented. this is true even though often, a hospital has a religious affiliation or is for some other reason specific to the facts of a case is not truly a &quot;neutral&quot; party in a visitation dispute and takes a position for a non-medical reason. As a young lawyer at a law firm that represented a hospital, I handled cases like these for a hospital when they came up for a couple of years, because nobody more experienced wanted to deal with these emotionally draining and time consuming conflicts with few monetary rewards for the hospital, and because the stakes from the hospital's perspective were low, so junior associate attorneys could be trusted with this cases. Appellate courts also often frame these decisions as fact bound case by case questions decided under general considerations applicable to all forms of injunctive relief in civil cases, rather than questions presenting more general questions of law to which general policy rules apply. Furthermore, the conceptual foundation in which we think about the authority of different family members over an incapacitated person at common law has shifted materially since the 19th century when these issues started to arise, and mostly hasn't been formally discussed by the courts as applied to these particular situations in the meantime. So, even when there are old precedents governing these situations, there is doubt regarding whether they are still good law, because the old precedents are based upon assumptions about spousal and parental and family member rights that no longer hold in other areas of the law. See also an analysis of issues of visitation and medical decision making for disabled persons, primarily under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act and related regulations, with footnotes particular to Maryland's state laws on the subject. Can E block B, C and D from visiting A in the hospital? What legal authorization form(s) can person A fill out and provide to B, C and D to prevent that from happening if this is a serious concern? The right of a private individual to visit someone in a hospital is usually not codified into law and is usually a matter of hospital policy within reason, acting in the best interests of its patients from a medical perspective. Usually E could only block B, C and D from visiting A in the hospital (1) with the cooperation of the hospital based upon its own policies (since as a practical matter, the hospital is generally in control of the situation and has broad authority to restrict access to its patients for health reasons), or (2) with a restraining order or protective order obtained from a court, or (3) as a legal guardian appointed by a court of person A (who generally has the authority to decide who their ward can interact with). In old common law cases (usually mid-19th century or earlier, but sometime in the early 20th century), the spouse of a married person (sometimes only the husband of a wife, but not vice versa), or the parents of an unmarried minor or unmarried person more generally, had the rights of a legal guardian with respect to an incapacitated person, and a family member had authority to make decisions for an incapacitated person as next of kin, in the absence of a parent or spouse. But, for the most part, this is no longer legally enforceable law. The Married Women's Property Acts of the late 19th century and early 20th century generally eliminated the authority of a spouse to act as legal guardian of an incapacitated spouse without a court order, sometimes subject to cases of &quot;necessities&quot;, and control of personal family property like a marital residence, household goods, or vehicle titled in a spouse's name alone that the competent spouse used in the ordinary course prior to the incapacity. The authority of a parent or next of kin person to take action for an incapacitated person without a court order was largely abrogated by state probate codes establishing court procedures for guardianship and conservatorship appointments for incapacitated people giving spouses, parents and next of kin priority, but not authority in the absence of a court order, except in the case of minor, unmarried, unemancipated minor children. And, even then, it is rare for statutes for expressly grant parents that authority over the children by statute and the authority is merely assumed as background common law to other statutes limiting that authority in cases of child abuse or child neglect, and some kinds of decisions still need court approval even in the case of parents of unemancipated, unmarried minor children. Documents specifically authorizing visitation are rare (I've never seen one in real life outside a civil union of a same sex couple), although states with &quot;civil union&quot; laws enacted before same sex marriage was legalized, often expressly afford a civil union partner visitation rates with priority over other family in hospitals, despite the fact that the status quo law is often ill defined. Hospital policies that denied visitation to de facto civil union partners were an important driving force in causing civil union legislation to be adopted with the support of legislators who didn't have a strong feeling about gay rights as an overall matter and who were otherwise indifferent to the economic rights of civil union matters but adopted the rights of married couples because it was the mindless default way to adopt a body of pre-existing law with little serious thought or fact rich informed deliberation. This is, in part, because visitation is not a matter over which a patient at a hospital has unilateral decision making power. Hospitals generally have their own policies regarding visits to patients. See, e.g.,, discussing the University of Maryland's hospital visitation policy. Usually, a hospital will honor a patient's reasonable request to not allow someone to visit them (out of general respect for patient autonomy). But, a hospital will often decline to allow a patient to have visitors out of concern for the best interests of the health of the patient even when a patient would like to have a visitor (e.g. a hospital would often refuse to allow someone with a recent positive COVID-19 test to enter an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) even if the patient would like to visit that person). Even here, however, the conceptual foundation behind traditional hospital practices related to visitation have shifted. The modern view is to more strongly respect the personal autonomy interests of a hospital patient than hospitals did in the past (the trend started to shift more strongly to a patient autonomy mindset in the late 1950s and gradually shifted toward greater patient autonomy in that time frame, particularly, following the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill). Hospitals are loathe to create a situation where their express statutory, contractual, and/or common law authority to regulate visitation could be overridden by a patient, and laws related to hospital visitation are rarely adopted by a legislature over the objection of the hospital lobby. What legal authorization form(s) can person A fill out and provide to B and C so that they get precedence in medical decision-making authority over E? Many hospitals would give E priority over B and C and D in making medical decisions for A, if A is incapacitated and there are no court orders or legal documents that provide otherwise, as a matter of policy. And, these policies are often traceable to the mindset associated with the old common law rules that no legal have binding legal effect. But some states have a scheme in which the hospital makes unilateral decisions in the best interests of the patient as they see it, unless B, C, D and E (and possibly other people designated by mutual agreement) jointly agree on who should make those decisions. See, e.g., Colorado Revised Statutes § 15-18.5-103 (Proxy decision-makers for medical treatment authorized--definitions). On paper, Colorado is such a state, although in practice, a hospital would offer listen to a spouse over other family anyway. I don't know if Maryland is such a state. I could not easily locate any statute in Maryland governing medical decision-making authority for an incompetent patient in the absence of a health care power of attorney or the equivalent or a guardianship proceeding, although my search was not exhaustive. A document commonly known either as a medical power of attorney, or a health care power of attorney, or a health care proxy designation made by a competent person who does not have a legal guardian appointed for them at the time, can designate someone such as B and C to have priority over E in making medical decisions for them. This document would be controlling absent a court order to the contrary, and usually a court would give authority to the person named in that document (although a court is almost never required to do so without regard to the suitability of the person seeking court ordered decision making power).
Tell your parents Given the circumstances it is a near certainty that the least he will do if you do not pay for the damage is make contact with them. It will be far, far better for you if they learn it from you rather than him. What could he do? He (or his insurance company) can contact your parents - he will almost certainly do this. He (or his insurance company) can sue you for negligence. Children are responsible for their own torts providing they have the capacity to recognize and avoid risk and harm - based on your question I have (and a court would have) no doubt that that you are. If you lose the case, and don't pay, he can have the government seize whatever you own in order to sell it to pay the debt you owe. If this happened in British Columbia or Manitoba he can sue your parents. He could report you to the police - they may or may not choose to prosecute if what you did was criminal: it probably wasn't but the police may investigate to determine this. If he is insured he may be required to notify the police.
That is, if my mom is sued by somebody for some reason, does that mean I am being sued, and my personal assets are at risk, rather than just hers'? Having power of attorney doesn't mean that you become "one and the same" person, it just means that you can stand in their place legally. If somebody sues your mother, you are authorized to act on your mother's behalf, but that doesn't mean that you are liable for any judgement. Of course there is a fiduciary responsibility to act in your mothers best interest, and violating that can open you up to suits that you are responsible for (because the suit would be against you, not your mother). And, what if she runs out of money, would I be personally financially liable for covering her expenses? No, you wouldn't be. Debts would be settled the same way as if she didn't have anybody acting as PoA. She (you) could declare bankruptcy on her behalf and have the debts discharged. This doesn't obligate you to pay them. And then, what if I simply don't have time to deal with her affairs, that is where I am being put in a position where I have to choose between keeping my job and my personal relationships at home versus going to deal with things over there, would having POA force me to do the latter? This is a personal decision for you. You could alternatively pursue having her declared as an "adult ward of the State". You need to consult a lawyer if you take on full power of attorney, to both protect you, your assets, and your responsibilities. This is something that you really need a lawyer to draft so that the lines are clear, and the expectations are as well. You may need to get a court involved if she is not of clear mind to sign these papers.
In a deposition, attorneys are supposed to keep their objections short and refrain from making an objection that indicates to the witness how he should answer. A question might be objectionable because it lacks foundation, because it is compound, because it calls for speculation, etc. Example 2, for instance, could be said to assume that Ms. Redacted was involved, and I might not want my client to discuss how he would act in that situation. Some attorneys in that situation might say, "Objection, assumes that Ms. Redacted had anything to do with this, which you haven't proved, and it's impossible to say what would have happened under circumstances that never happened." This gives my client a pretty clear signal that he ought to make clear that Ms. Redacted wasn't around, and that he should try to avoid getting pinned down on any questions about what he would have done if she had been. This practice -- known as "a speaking objection" -- can be used to signal to the witness how best to answer, and it leads to huge fights in a deposition. To avoid those fights, courts have developed a practice of requiring lawyers to simply "object to the form," rather than coaching the witness. That puts the objection on the record so it isn't waived, and if it's truly problematic, the parties have an opportunity to explain in greater detail after the deposition is concluded.
must all interaction be through a lawyer after receiving the first letter? Consistent with others' answer, no, you don't need a lawyer. But your question in and of itself is indicative of the steep learning curve you would need to undergo in order to avoid "shooting yourself in the foot", as the saying goes. By this I am not encouraging you to get a lawyer (in fact, here on stackexchange and elsewhere I promote litigation in pro per). Instead, I encourage people to learn about the applicable statutes, procedural laws, how to conduct legal research, and to draft/present their arguments in court. Here are some suggestions regarding your response letter: Avoid sarcastic admissions such as "Right, for sure I am at fault for the employer's [fill_in_the_blanks]". If you ask for a clarification, clearly state that you expect reasonably sufficient detail as well as any and all records that substantiate the alleged damages. Although that won't strictly limit the allegations the employer can make in court proceedings, the attorney's reply might help evidencing the employer's vexatious approach later on. Avoid wording that may be misinterpreted as consciousness of guilt. Be assertive and truthful. Keep in mind the lawyer is gauging (1) how easily he can intimidate you, and (2) whether he can make additional claims to harass you via court proceedings. From now on, all your interactions with the attorney and the employer should be in writing (preferably email, given its reproducibility). When unethical individuals are aware that their position is devoid of merit, they are very tempted to indulge in false accusations (of threat, for example). Thus, communications in writing constitute objectively verifiable proof of who is acting unlawfully. Even if the attorney premises on your contract (or employment agreement/manual, or company's guidelines) the alleged damages, the clauses at issue might be illegal and therefore void. For instance, from 2007-2012 my former employer (an Indian IT intermediary) prohibited me --via contract-- to disclose my salary. The contract contained the typical lawyered babbling, but that doesn't mean that all of it was legal. In 2013 I realized that the prohibition violated Michigan law, and he had no option but to strike the entire clause. That being said, I didn't sue him for that, but for other more important matters which are currently pending review in the U.S. Supreme Court. Absent any further context in your inquiry, it is hard to make additional suggestions on how to proceed.
Yes. Making statements in a legally protected confidential context is not publishing them, and in most jurisdictions, defamation must be published to create a cause of action. In such a case the patient might well have a cause of action against the therapist for violation of patient confidentially, and a complaint to the relevant authority could get the therapist's license revoked, or perhaps a censure from the licensing authority, whatever it is the the jurisdiction. Note &quot;published&quot; does not have to mean putting them in print, but does mean making them in such a way that general circulation of them is plausible. In addition, such statements may be coered by a qualified privilege. In Marchesi v. Franchino, 283 Md. 131, 135, 387 A.2d 1129 (1978) the Maryland Supreme Court (reviewing a case from the Court of Special Appeals) held (at 135-136) that: ... the common law recognized that a person ought to be shielded against civil liability for defamation where, in good faith, he publishes a statement in furtherance of his own legitimate interests, or those shared in common with the recipient or third parties, ... The Maryland court went on to quote the Restatement (Second) of Torts, (Scope Note preceding § 593 (1977)) which states that if a privilege were not granted: information that should be given or received would not be communicated because of [the] fear of . . . persons capable of giving it that they would be held liable in an action of defamation if their statements were untrue. It would seem that a statement by a person to his or her own therapist, as a part of therapy, and intended to be held in confidence by the therapist, ought to fall under this definition of privilege, although I cannot find any actual case with this exact fact pattern. If the person knew or had reason to know that the therapist was likely to repeat the statement, that would be different. If the person and the therapist were not in a practitioner/patient relationship, with its normal expectations of confidentiality, that also would be different.
Is an attorney permitted to ask questions like those in either paragraphs two and three? Yes. That does not mean that they will be considered relevant or even appropriate, though. Is the witness allowed to decline to answer such questions for reason of irrelevance, or other grounds? Yes. In general, though, it would be safer for the witness to state an objection (be it on the basis of irrelevance, confrontational, asked &amp; answered, as to form, etc.) and answer the question nonetheless, rather than simply refusing to answer it. By simply declining to answer a question regardless of the basis for refusal, the witness risks affording a crooked lawyer the opportunity to falsely generalize that the witness was uncooperative. One exception to the idea of "object-and-then-answer" is where some privilege is the alleged basis for the objection, since the substance of the answer could be such that it amounts to waiving the privilege even where that privilege is legitimate. The witness may also opt to answer the lawyer's irrelevant questions even without stating an objection. Some questions are so obviously irrelevant, dull, or stupid that a failure to raise an objection will be inconsequential. In such scenarios, raising objections can only lengthen the deposition transcript and make it harder to read. For a real-life example of deposition with plenty of dull questions, take a look at the transcript (which I split in parts one, two and three) of the 4-hour deposition where I myself was the witness (you can download the case file, almost in its entirety, from this page). You will notice that I did not raise objections during the deposition, the main reason being what I explained above: To avoid giving the opposing counsel an opportunity to falsely accuse me in court of being uncooperative during deposition. Furthermore, addressing the crook's futile questions (1) projects transparency and helps on the witness's part, and (2) precludes a false &amp; misleading impression as if the witness had something to hide. After all, wrongdoers are the ones most interested in eluding testimony in ways very similar to this other deposition. The reason of being of objections is precisely that the law "is aware" that, as a matter of fact, lawyers indulge in all kinds of abusive questions when taking sworn testimony --be it in trial or at deposition-- of a witness.