Fighting Back Against Stalkers: Defamation
What is defamation? Learn the legal concept of "actual malice."
This newsletter is the Frontier Psychiatrists. It’s a daily publication. It’s about Health and related matters! It is not just about psychiatry. One psychiatrist writes it. The plural is anachronistic.
We often address legal matters; in this case, that is a Royal We. I think the law is interesting, in the same way earth would be interesting to aliens. I am writing a series about how to fight back against stalkers…this is part III. I’m trying to avoid mentioning any specific trolls, of whom we may all of heard. Ahem.
Today, we will address stalking, defamation law, and how to fight back against online trolls and criminals who seek to make our lives miserable.
The legal definition of "Actual Malice" is crucial when understanding when "great harm" becomes legally actionable…which brings us to defamation law.
The definition of malice is: "the intention or desire to do evil."
I consider the inability to get fresh fruit in the morning intentional evil on the part of Big Sugar. This statement doesn’t meet the specific legal definition of malice.
In legal matters, it is defined thusly:
n. a conscious, intentional wrongdoing either of a civil wrong like libel (false written statement about another) or a criminal act like assault or murder, with the intention of doing harm to the victim.
This intention includes ill will, hatred, or total disregard for the other's well-being.
In a lawsuit for defamation, the existence of malice may increase the judgment to include general damages. Proof of malice is absolutely necessary for a "public figure" to win a lawsuit for defamation, thanks to The Supreme Court ruling in 1964’s New York Times v. Sullivan.
They ruled that the First Amendment requires defamation law to accommodate good-faith public debate.
The standard protects our “profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open and may include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”
In every defamation case, a plaintiff needs to prove four things:
The allegedly defaming statement(s) in question conveyed facts (as opposed to pure opinion);
The facts it stated or implied were false;
The statement was delivered to others; and
The plaintiff was harmed.
To overcome the hurdle of proving “actual malice,” a plaintiff must prove even more: that the defendant either knew the statement was false at the time or demonstrated “reckless disregard” for its falsity. For example, if I was to post about the following newsletter article from me on X/wittter:
The link to the article is included and the article is not about either cat murder or loving higher costs. It is plausibly reckless to disregard the truth by not to have clicked the link. How reckless is reckless? Well, that is why we have courts!
Maybe I can make a really really really clear version?
In this example, one does not need to click the link to determine the reckless disregard of the statement. In this example, I’m defaming myself1. I mean, who would be so reckless in real life?2
In my example, I solved this conceptual— surety about what the defendant knew—problem by being the defamer of myself! Thus, we can assume identical knowledge between the plaintiff (me) and the defendant (also me) for legal purposes. My writing's fiscal consequences (again, Id be suing myself) were at issue. In real life, those issues would need to be legally demonstrated…
In the above post:
Owen “NEVER” uses specific examples as a fact3.
The statement is false, as provable by a drifting downward of the eye. This would allow one to see a link to an article, which is the opposite of the “factual statement.”
This defamatory fact is conveyed to others…on either Xwitter or Notes…
I would need to be harmed by the FALSEHOOD that I never use Funny Destiny’s Child songs.
The financial damages might look like this:
One of the reasons it's so hard to file a defamation tort4, and win, is that it varies state by state. People have used defamation lawsuit to silence critics. It's a lot of money to file a defamation lawsuit. So people with a lot of money used it more! New York has a lot of rich jerks who like to bully people in the courts. It’s legal standards have evolved thusly.
In summary, if you feel someone is defaming you as part of stalking, you need to do the following things:
Keep endless track of everything.
Look for statements that are demonstrably false and knowable to the defamer in ways that are provable.
Document any and all financial harms, preferably with dollar values
Record times, dates, truth or falsehood, other documentable ways of proving that the defendant knew those things to be true or false.
Put this all in one easy to reference spreadsheet.
It ends up being a lot of project management to be harassed or defamed, but the more you keep track of it the easier it is to act on.
Familiarize yourself with a laws of your state, and with the state of your defamer.
Consult expert legal counsel.
This forensic update is provided by someone who does work as an expert witness, but I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. It's advice about what you need to know about the law in order to not waste a lawyers time!
This is part III of an ongoing series. Prior advice to the stalked and defamed can be found here and here.
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And of course…
which is absurd, but it’s good enough for an example
It stretches the bounds of credulity.
(in the style of an incorrect MCAT answer) is stated as a fact, which is an extreme answer choice on the MCAT.
This is legal speak for lawsuit. It’s different from torte, which is a noun, “a sweet layered cake or tart.” I wish all torts were, in fact, tortes. And I wish all of us only had a tiny piece, so that we wouldn't get diabetes.