I am being threatened for defamation for sharing an article about an alleged scammer which was published in local news site There is an alleged scammer in my community. An article about him was published by our local news site. As I have a lot of contacts, I shared the article to all my contacts and it became viral. He is now threatening to sue me for defamation. He is well versed in legal matters and have taken people to court several times. The article about him is definitely true, but obviously he can deny them all in court. Should I be concerned? Thank you for all the answers. I am in Australia. To be precise, I said 'Please be aware of this alleged scammer' + link to the article. It was published by www.theaustralian.com.au, a top news outlet. I was careful to not indict. He has only threatened me.
Repeating a defamatory statement is itself defamatory This is known as the repetition rule and is illustrated in Brown v Bower &amp; Another [2017] EWHC 2637 (QB). In essence, the &quot;local news site&quot; is responsible for the reputational damage suffered by their publication and you are responsible for the damage caused by your amplification of that publication. So if the local news article was seen by a few dozen people locally, the damages might be relatively modest. If your publication caused it to be seen by millions of people and caused nationwide or worldwide damage to the person's reputation so that they are at risk of losing income or opportunities in the future, the damages can be vast. How you shared it is important. If you endorsed it, which includes forwarding it without commentary, then it is likely defamatory. If you were more circumspect and said something that shows an open mind to the allegations like &quot;This is an interesting story, I can't wait to see how it plays out&quot;, then it's likely not defamatory. Of course, if the allegations are true then you have nothing to worry about; truth is a complete defence to defamation. You can prove that they are true, right? I mean with real evidence like a conviction for fraud. Or, at the very least, pending or actual charges from the police. Or, failing that you have good evidence that you yourself have been scammed specifically by this person. Or that you have had people who have been scammed tell you personally exactly how it happened? No? Well, I wouldn't count on a truth defence if I were you.
What's the worst that can happen? If you do nothing, it's a bit inconvenient. If you delete all that company's stuff, who knows what they could sue you for. I'm not saying they would be right, but being sued can be expensive, no matter whether you are wrong or right. Send a letter by registered mail, with a witness to the contents, that you are the only one with admin rights to these sites, and asking them how they would like to take over these sites, and informing them that you will delete anything on your personal email after a reasonable time if you don't hear from them. And since anything you do is work for you, you should expect some appropriate compensation. Deleting their property, even if it affects you, is risky.
Defamation that is actionable in court in the United States consists of a false statement about a presently existing fact that damages your reputation and is not a matter of opinion. While not strictly required in a case involving private parties that is not a matter of public concern, most defamation cases require proof that the false statement was made knowing it was false or with reckless disregard for the truth (which basically means with no factual basis and no ability to know if it is true or false). Hyperbole is excluded. Statements made to you personally cannot be defamatory, since you know the truth. For example, claims that you were falsely called mentally ill might be considered statement of opinion or hyperbole. Similarly, if the person who said you weren't being hacked actually believed this was true (e.g. the pastor's assistant might believe this based upon what the pastor who was knowledgeable about computers might have told the assistant), then that might also not be actionable. Most states have quite short statutes of limitations for defamation. For example, in Colorado, the statute of limitations is one year from the date that you learn that a statement was made to another person. Some kinds of defamatory statements (slander per se) do not require proof that you suffered actual damage to your reputation. Other kinds of defamatory statements do require hard proof of your economic damages. Harassment does not neatly fit into one legal category. There could be claims for intentional infliction of extreme emotional distress, for breach of fiduciary duty owed by a pastor to a parishioner, for sexual harassment if factually appropriate, or for retaliation for certain kinds of lawful conduct. None of these are particularly easy to prove and again, the statute of limitations is not terribly long, typically two or three years from an incident. Both defamation and harassment claims would be subject to first amendment immunities to the extent that they involved a religious official who could be legitimately characterized as carrying out a religious function in making the statements. Given the events you describe, this is probably a weak defense, but it would certainly pose one more hurdle to a lawsuit. Another remedy for harassment and stalking, in addition to or instead of money damages in a lawsuit, might be to seek a restraining order against the people who are the source of the problem if you could really prove it with evidence that is admissible in a court of law that a judge would be likely to find to be more credible than the lies that they try to tell to defend themselves in court. Finally, many forms of hacking violate state and federal laws and one of the federal laws, at least, contains a right to bring a private lawsuit against the hacker to enforce it. The first amendment religion and free speech clauses would not generally protect any hacking activity either. But, proving that someone is guilty of hacking, even in the face of strong circumstantial evidence, is often very difficult. For example, even if you can prove that the hacking originated at an IP address belonging to the pastor, proving that the pastor was actually the person at the keyboard and not a friend of his or another family member of his, might be quite difficult to prove. Also, as in the cases of defamation and harassment, quantifying your money damages could be difficult. Stalking and hacking are also both usually criminal offenses so you could file a complaint with a law enforcement agency, although many law enforcement agencies lack the ability and competence to understand and investigate hacking cases and the inclination to deal firmly with allegations of stalking. There are practical steps that can be taken to prevent hacking from a technological angle, although I am not competent to tell you what they are, and your post doesn't provide sufficient detail to know in any case. Obviously, this isn't a legal solution. You can also be mindful in your daily life to act in a manner that mitigates your exposure to stalking although there are limits to how effective this non-legal solution can be as well. You can combat character assassination with non-legal PR and counter-gossip approaches as well as with lawsuits. Ultimately, you need to decide what to do and may need to confer with a lawyer and give that lawyer detailed factual information to evaluate your claims, and you may or may not decide that the legal system is a good solution. Proving incidents in a he said, she said situation, especially when one of the people involved is an outwardly respected pastor who has no qualms about lying and gas lighting, can be very difficult - so in the absence of proof, you may need to figure out how to develop proof before it is sensible to sue and you may not have much time to do that. You are unfortunately in a situation with no easy solution, just a variety of second best options, and you have to decide which ones to pursue. You also need to focus not on what remedies the law allows, or what wrongs have been done by the perpetrators. Instead, you need to focus on what will maximize your personal well being. Some people find that litigation can bring closure and relief, but ultimately, you can't control what the criminal justice system does and you have only partial control over what happens in a civil lawsuit. The litigation process prevents you from letting go of the matter if you later decide that is what will serve you best, can be costly, can be unjust, and can be aggravating. In terms of time, treasure and its impact on you emotionally, it can be a very expensive solution and can force you into a position where you are not in control. If the court finds that your evidence isn't solid enough, you could end up worse off, rather than better off, as a result of a civil lawsuit. And, usually, you can not get your attorneys' fees as part of your damages in a civil lawsuit for defamation or some kinds of harassment (such as intentional infliction of emotional distress) even if you prevail. Ultimately, a court in a civil action for wrongful conduct can award you money, but can't vindicate you morally or remove that person from his position in the organization. Also, if you win a money judgment, you still have to identify assets or income from which you can collect it and many of these claims would not be covered by any insurance policy. And, ultimately, a restraining order, while potentially a helpful tool in helping to get the wrong doers to back off, is just a piece of paper stating your rights and describing conduct that would be wrongful and punished if proven, not a magical shield that prevents someone from violating that restraining order just as they have violated your dignity and reasonable expectations of civil treatment and probably your legal rights already. You have to decide what your personal objectives are and how best to achieve them without getting unduly focused on the limited and imperfect options that the legal system provides.
You can hire someone to locate the defendant with the information that you have, or you can apply to a court for permission to serve them with process via &quot;substituted service&quot; because their physical address can't be determined. But, in general, better business practice is to not enter into contracts with people with whom you have more than a name that might be false, and an email address, unless you have some means of non-judicial enforcement of your agreement (like the practical ability to shut down access to an internet subscription). If you don't even know if someone's name is real and have done nothing to confirm that then you also have no assurances that they have any assets from which you could collect if you won a breach of contract lawsuit. If you deal with large numbers of people in low value contracts, it may be worth treating the fact that some contracts are effectively unenforceable as a cost of doing business. But, if a contract is important, it was foolish from a business perspective to rely on a contract on that basis alone, even if it is legal to do so.
It may not be libel, but it may violate other statutes and may support a judgement against the person publishing this information as long as there is an injury-in-fact ("an invasion of a legally protected interest that is concrete and particularized and actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical"). A recent case, Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins 578 U.S. ___ (2016) considered the case where a company created a profile for a person. That profile stated "that he is married, has children, is in his 50’s, has a job, is relatively affluent, and holds a graduate degree". The plaintiff asserted that all of this was incorrect. The plaintiff made a claim under the Fair Credit Reporting Act because the information was false. However, mere violation of statute is not sufficient to meet the "injury-in-fact" requirement for standing. Congress can't create standing via statute. Injury-in-fact still requires a "concrete" injury. This does not need to be a physical, tangible injury. But, it does need to be concrete. On its own, publication of false information, even when statute prohibits it, does not create standing. There must be an injury-in-fact.
To examine this further and answer your question, we need to look at Copyright (and fair use) as well as Defamation. Alas, I am unsure as to how taking legitimate headlines from around the world and attributing their source is 'fake news' - but I'll accept that it's 'fake news' for the purposes of exploring this topic. A lot of the potential (or motive) for a person or company to litigate against you will be context specific and detailed to how you have used their work and portray their journalists and characters - misquotes etc. As an exception to British copyright law, fair dealing is governed by Sections 29 and 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, which outlines three instance where fair dealing is a legitimate defence: If the use is for the purposes of research or private study; If it is used for the purposes of criticism, review or quotation; Where it is utilised for the purposes of reporting current events (this does not apply to photographs) However, where you may come into problems is: A statutory definition for fair dealing does not exist; it will always be a matter of fact, degree and interpretation in every fair use case. Nor is there a percentage or quantitative measure to determine fair dealing. The Intellectual Property Office lists the key factors used to determine the validity of whether a particular dealing with a work is fair as follows: Has the use of the work impacted negatively on the market for the original work? If the creator or owner has lost potential revenue through the re-use of their work, it is not likely to be fair. Was it reasonable and necessary to use the amount of work that was taken? Also: Fair use for parody, caricature or pastiche The UK copyright law on fair use of works for the purposes of creating a parody or pastiche is also listed in Section 30A, Schedule 2 (2A) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. References to all here. Guidance from the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) states that fair use needs to be “fair and proportionate” and does not protect an individual from any other rights an author may have. Those other rights may involve claiming defamation if this material creates fake news and uses the names of real journalists or companies etc - and if they allege that your AI fake news has caused serious harm in any way to their reputation - they could sue you for breach of the Defamation Act 2013. All of this is entirely contextual however as to how your AI might display or make fake news and how Google caches it and displays it - and if it could be portrayed as 'real' or believable for example. You are also doing this at a time where 'anti fake news' law is evolving... and even though you say it's fake news for AI experiment purposes - it's a growing field of concern for many. (see here) Copyright law is a vast and evolving area - and nothing is clear cut. It really depends if a major news company didn't like what you were doing and took exception to it and issued challenges on many areas of law based on that.
Is it true that a suit of defamation could require “very little effort”? No. Definitely not. The Wikipedia article (and understandably the comment on which it is premised) leaves out many details about substantive and procedural law which are essential in US jurisdictions. For instance, the [Wikipedia] item of "1. accusing someone of a crime" is insufficient for the falsehoods to be considered defamation per se. The crime of which one is falsely accused needs to be considered an infamous crime or involve moral turpitude. Under [US] defamation law, a crime is deemed serious or infamous when it is classified as felony or its punishment could exceed one year of prison. The case law cited in Lakin v. Rund, 896 N.W.2d 76 (2016) reflects how this criterion is uniform among US jurisdictions. Another difficult issue in defamation lawsuits is the need to prove the defendant's mental state known as actual malice. Even where there is clear proof of a defamer's actual malice, a plaintiff can be denied justice because of judge's arbitrary choice to side with the defendant (just like with non-defamation lawsuits). For case law from various jurisdictions regarding defamation law and actual malice, you might want to see the citations in my briefs in the SCOTUS here and here. Most of the records in regard to the latter case are available here. Defamation lawsuits are not exempt of having to comply with the procedural laws involved in judicial proceedings either, nor is the discovery, drafting, or legal research any simpler for being a lawsuit about defamation. In the context of the comments that prompted your question here, the "repeated violations" that SE imputed to former moderator Monica would hardly be grounds for a viable lawsuit against SE for defamation per se or otherwise. Here are some reasons: Rejecting a policy of gender pronouns such as the one SE seeks to impose is not considered an infamous crime. There is no legislation to that effect, at least yet. An actual refusal to adhere to that policy hardly involves moral turpitude. Far from involving corruption (i.e., moral turpitude), the controversy about gender pronouns touches on some of a person's deepest beliefs. Thus, the "offense" of opposing such a policy cannot be said to constitute an act of moral turpitude. The previous two items rule out a viable claim of defamation per se. Thus, Monica would have to prove that SE's falsehoods about her (whatever they are) caused her concrete losses (a typical example is lost income) by prompting others to dissociate from her. I am unaware of whether Monica's situation would fit in this scenario. You are right in that a claim of mental distress is not viable either. Note from here or here that in a claim of Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED) (1) the conduct must be intentional and reckless; (2) the conduct must be extreme and outrageous; (3) there must be a causal connection between the wrongful conduct and the emotional distress; and (4) the emotional distress must be severe Any claims of harassment that might be available to Monica would not be against SE, but against the specific individuals who engaged in harassing her directly. Depending on the methods and severity of the harassment, Monica might be able to obtain injunctive relief --typically in the form of restraining orders-- against those specific individuals. It is noteworthy that not all criticism or heckling at or about Monica would be cognizable as harassment.
This appears to be a complaint about lawyers using the legal process to achieve what their client wants. Forgive me, but this seems to be like complaining that doctors only want to cure the client's disease, architects only want to design the client's buildings and generals only want to kill the client's enemies. Your lawyer is not your business strategist or your life coach! A civil case is always about the money. If you are pursuing a civil case over a principle then you are going to spend a lot of money and probably lose. The use of a lawyer should always be part of your wider negotiation strategy in the same way that your armed forces are part of your diplomacy; in both cases the threat of use is usually better than the actual use. A civil case always follows a failure to successfully negotiate. Not all by any means, but most, civil cases would be better settled by agreement than litigation by all parties. If you believe that your objectives can best be served by a social media campaign, political pressure, etc. then go for it. Your lawyer can advise you what the risks are wrt to defamation etc. but ultimately how you choose to pursue your goal is up to you. Lawyers, understandably, look for legal solutions. A public relations professional is far better placed than a lawyer to inform your media strategy.