The VLW Blog

A $1-million defamation suit against a leading advocate of child vaccination was dismissed yesterday by Alexandria U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton who ruled the physician’s statement “she lies,” in reference to an anti-vaccination advocate, was not actionable.
The lawsuit pitted two high-profile leaders in the controversy over vaccinations. The plaintiff, Barbara Arthur, is acting president [...]

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We have reported on how the new ‘Twiqbal’ standard has raised the bar for pleading a federal complaint.
The latest word on appellate review of the heightened pleading standard finds the 4th Circuit agreeing with Alexandria U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee’s dismissal of an auto dealership’s defamation claim against a Web site that posted consumer [...]

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If Richmond lawyer Christopher C. Spencer wants an adverse ruling set aside, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will have to do it, says U.S. District Judge Norman K. Moon.
Spencer contended that American Insurance Groups Inc. and its agents defamed him by asserting in a lawsuit that he was responsible for blowing an appeal [...]

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The Vicki Iseman suit was not the only defamation case in the news in recent days.
On Friday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a jury award to a Korean businessman who said he was defamed by newspaper columns in a Korean-language newspaper.
According to the unpublished appellate opinion in Choi v. Lee, defendant Kyu [...]

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Being linked to “developers” is not defamatory in Chesterfield County.
Chesterfield County Circuit Judge Herbert C. Gill has dismissed a local businessman’s $1.35 million defamation suit against residents who opposed a sewer line the businessman supported by saying the businessman was “being paid by developers.”
This claim and other statements occurred in letters the residents wrote protesting [...]

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An executive who said she was defamed during a performance evaluation gets another shot at a jury, in today’s ruling from the Supreme Court of Virginia in Hyland v. Raytheon Technical Services.
In March 2007, the high court reversed Cynthia Hyland’s $1.85 million award, saying two of the five allegedly defamatory statements in the executive’s job [...]

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To the catalogue of actionable statements in the work place, employment lawyers can add a transit company executive’s statement to a plaintiff’s supervisor, alleging receipt of a client complaint against the plaintiff.
Pro se plaintiff Emmett Jafari worked for Greater Richmond Transit Company for two years beginning in February 2006, according to Jafari v. Old Dominion [...]

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Have you defamed a coworker when you say she faced conflict on the job because she was not always to work on time?
Fact versus opinion in the workplace was before the Supreme Court of Virginia this morning when the court heard oral argument in two defamation cases.
First up was Butler v. N.E.W. Customer Servs. Cos., [...]

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Montgomery County Circuit Judge Ray W. Grubbs ruled that a Christiansburg developer failed to make out a case in his lawsuit against a community blogger who criticized the developer online.
Grubbs this week dismissed the suit filed by Roger Woody against Terry Ellen Carter, one of the authors of a blog called “Think, Christiansburg!“  Although Woody [...]

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Self-promotion, especially on a matter of public interest, makes it very tough to win a libel case. That’s the clear, if hardly new, message from the 4th Circuit in Hatfill v. The New York Times Co.
The suit was based on a series of five columns in 2002 by Times writer Nicholas Kristof taking the FBI [...]

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