Summary
of the Case
Several days ago, a settlement on a defamation case
has been settled to $500,000, over a Facebook comment made by the defendant
back in November 2015.
Other than solely defamation, the plaintiff (Davyne
Dial) sued Jacquelyn Hammond for
intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence. The comment on
Facebook, which ultimately gave the space for the plaintiff to make the said
allegations, falsely accused the plaintiff of drunkenly killing her son.
In 1976, Dial did lose her 11-year-old
son in an accidental shooting while playing with another boy, an incident in
which Dial wasn’t involved. After reading the comment made by Hammond, Dial realized
the level of attention around the remark started growing, causing for Dial to
have her reputation greatly damaged. In her comments about the case, Dial
stated that “she feels Hammond's comment crossed a line of civility
than she could not tolerate”, adding how “she hopes the large settlement amount
conveys a strong message to the general public in an age when most interactions
with other people are virtual”.
Additionally, Dial and Hammond used
to be two major rivals in the efforts to gain control over a local, low-wattage
radio station WPVM. Today, Dial is the general manager for the station.
The way that the Facebook comment
made by Hammond reached Dial is over a screenshot of the comment by one of Dial’s
friends, who sent the picture to Dial and warned her about Hammond. Although
the Facebook comment was removed by the defendant only couple of minutes after
it was posted, Dial was able to add more evidence of the intent behind the
remark made by Hammond, hence bringing the case to the court.
In Hammond’s defense, her attorney
stated that the comment made was “misplaced in the wrong thread”, removed and “restated
in the proper forum”. However, after having several screenshots from the
initial thread, Dial was able to prove that Hammond’s comment was connected to
the topic.
Finally, the judge ruled the case in
the plaintiff’s advantage with $250k of actual damages and $250k of punitive
damages that altogether come up to $500k settlement. In the article, a
specialist in tort law Michael Green maintained that it is “extraordinarily
rare to have a private defamation suit to result in a recovery of that
magnitude”. However, the case seems to be of such volume due to the false
accusation of the plaintiff’s immediate involvement in her son’s death.
Legal Questions
Since the news article talks about
a settled case, there are little legal questions that could be raised. Nonetheless,
my interest in this case is whether there was a better defense available for
the defendant. Reading the article, I couldn’t find the defendant’s attorney’s
statements as effective as they might have been if there were some additional
effort put into finding a stronger defense for Hammond. Additionally, it is a
lot harder for the plaintiff to prove libel in court than it is for the
defendant, as the defense needs only one strong defense in order to have the
charges dropped.
Another interesting portion of this
case is the fact that the Defamation suit was brought forward regarding an online
comment. As the Internet still has full First Amendment protection, it is
interesting to see the course of this case, as a lot of intentional and
malicious comments are made online without successful libel/ defamation suits.
Relevant Doctrine
Even though the case mentions
several categories of law, including negligence and the intentional infliction of
emotional distress, the main allegation that navigated the course of the
lawsuit was the Plaintiff’s case for Defamation – Libel. The reason why it is
libel is because the remark made was a false fact written on Facebook. In order
to prove Defamation (Libel) in court, the plaintiff (Dial) had to prove the six
elements of the libelous case – publication, identification, defamation,
falsity, fault and damage.
Publication
In order to prove publication, the plaintiff must be
able to prove that the comment was read by at least one other person outside
Dial and Hammond. Considering the fact that the comment was read and
screenshotted by one of Dial’s friends, this proves publication.
Identification
Proving identification means that the plaintiff must
find at least one other person who reasonably believes that the comment was
directly of and concerning the plaintiff. Same as for publication, the fact
that Dial’s friend sent the snapshot to Dial to warn her about Hammond’s
comment gives us the external person who identified Dial as being called out.
defamation
In its definition, defamation stands for the injury to
a plaintiff’s reputation, in which the plaintiff has to prove that a
substantial and respectable minority of the community thinks less of her or shuns
the plaintiff. Additionally, if the defamatory comment falsely accuses the
plaintiff of a serious crime, the defamation is automatically assumed. Knowing the
content of the comment made by Hammond (“I didn’t get drunk and kill my kid”),
it falsely accuses Dial of murdering her child, so the defamation is assumed.
Fault
For the plaintiff to prove fault, we have to consider
the level of engagement with media by both the plaintiff. Since Dial works as a
general manager for the local radio station, and runs a Facebook page/ forum
site. This would make Dial a limited purpose public figure, as she doesn’t
necessarily always have a high level of access to the media. Nonetheless, Dial
has to prove actual malice in order to win the case. Actual malice is defined
as the knowledge of truth, and the reckless or intentional disregard for the
truth when making the false statement. According to the article, Hammond knew
that Dial had lost a child previously, which adds the fact that the comment was
directed at the plaintiff.
Falsity
To answer whether the statement is substantially true,
it is already proven that it is not. Dial was not involved in the incident in
which her 11-year-old son died.
Damage
According to the facts given in the article, the
damages mentioned are actual injury and punitive damages. There could be no
presumed damages, as the defamation didn’t influence any potential financial
losses. So, in the case, Dial got $500k for the overall damages. In order to
get punitive damages, however, Dial had to prove actual malice regardless of
her level of access to the media.
Conclusion
Finally, the libel lawsuit against Hammond’s Facebook
comment was successfully proven by Dial. By having screenshots of the comments
regarding the false accusation of Dial’s involvement in the death of her child,
she was able to prove defamation, and other mentioned allegations (IIED &
negligence). As it was discussed above, the interesting part is that Dial
managed to successfully bring out a defamation case for a Facebook comment,
knowing that the Internet regulations are still relatively vague and unclear in
certain cases, especially regarding Social Media.
Word Count: 1154 words
References
Thank you for this excellent recap. An aspect of the case that was not included in the original article was that we had screenshots of a private message exchange between Hammond and the individual who captured the original screenshots of the Facebook posts. The private messages were acquired in discovery and clearly proved that the comment was about myself. (Davyne Dial). So in reality the defense had very little to go on, and attempts to dismiss due to "misplaced" comments were denied by two Judges.
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