Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog
The summons rarely feels proportional to what happened. You left an honest review of a contractor. You warned a colleague about a vendor who had burned you. You answered a reporter’s question, or posted what you believed was true, or simply repeated what half the industry already knew. Now a process server is at the door and a complaint accuses you of defamation, demands a sum with a lot of zeros, and frames your words as if they were a calculated act of malice. The plaintiff is betting that the cost and fear of litigation will make you apologize, retract, and pay before anyone tests whether the claim is any good.
Often the claim is not good. Illinois defamation law is far more demanding of plaintiffs than most people sued under it realize, and several of its defenses are designed to end a weak case early, before it drains a year of your life. We tell clients the truth in both directions. A genuinely false and damaging statement of fact can cost you. But a great many defamation suits are built on opinion, on substantially true statements, on words that carry an innocent meaning, or on a theory that runs out of time. Knowing which is which is the whole game.
Begin with what the plaintiff must prove. A defamation claim in Illinois requires a false statement of fact about the plaintiff, an unprivileged publication of that statement to a third party, some level of fault, and damage to the plaintiff’s reputation. Each element is a place where a case can fail. The requirement that the statement be one of fact, and false, is the one defendants underuse. Continue reading ›