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Slander Law Limitations

One aspect of slander law that is especially interesting is the aspect of slandering someone with an already irreparably tarnished reputation. The book cites a hypothetical example where the town drunk is mistakenly seen staggering along the sidewalk and false gossip defaming him spreads through the town. However, since his reputation already hinges on being publicly drunk, a false statement defaming him on those grounds cannot be considered to be damaging to his reputation (Tedford 82). There are, however, significant limitations to this rule that complicate the makeup of a slandered party's reputation. In an article titled "Libel and Slander. Damages. Evidence of Prior Privileged Publications of the Same Defamatory Charges Is Not Admissible in Mitigation of Damages. Dingle v. Associated Newspapers, Ltd." from the Harvard Law Review in 1962, an early precedent in defamation cases is discussed, specifically, that prior legal action "of the same defamatory manner" cannot be introduced as evidence to prove a tarnished reputation (1229). The review describes this precedent as unsound, and I agree. Though it is time consuming to review past cases to ensure that they will not prove prejudicial if they were judged false, the expense is worth the possibility of proving a pattern of injurious behavior that has damaged many different people. The reputations of people are built on their interactions with other people, and if describing those actions is prejudicial, it's probably for a reason.


“Libel and Slander. Damages. Evidence of Prior Privileged Publications of the Same Defamatory Charges Is Not Admissible in Mitigation of Damages. Dingle v. Associated Newspapers, Ltd. (C. A. 1961).” Harvard Law Review, vol. 75, no. 6, 1962, pp. 1228–1230. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1338485.

Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 28, 2017 at 12:47 AM

    I really like how you point out that "the reputations of people are built on their interactions with other people...". This is a very interesting point when trying to define what constitutes and is protected under the First Amendment, specifically defamation. I wonder though, what about those people who are working to change their reputation, or what could be modernized in this case as "image" or "identity," from negative to something more positive than it has been in the past?

    For example, a drug addict who is going through rehab and falls off the wagon a few times and relapses. Lets say that person relapses, but after continues to try and positively change their life and reputation through rehab and detox, eventually succeeding to stay clean. Two years later, once the drug addict has finally created a better, clean life, and moved away from the old one, someone from their past resurfaces and slanders the former drug addicts name to their new community where their reputation is completely different from where they were before. If this situation was tried for defamation, would the person's past really be able to prove anything about their behavior now? Probably not.

    What I am getting at is that we cannot always take into account what someone's past is when ruling on something this serious, because they could be a completely different person than what some people used to know their reputation as. Although, I do think you make a good point that we are constantly being judged by what we do and how we act, which can follow us for our entire lives.

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