When to hire a Los Angeles Defamation Attorney

Defamation of character injuries are often filed between individuals in Los Angeles.  It all begins on the playground when you’re five. Some bully tells a lie about you, and suddenly the whole neighborhood stops playing with you.  That is an oversimplification of what has come to be known as “defamation of character” in the legal arena, but it certainly represents the helplessness that victims of defamation feel when something untrue has been said about them which directly affects their lives.

Defamation of character, or simply “defamation” is a considered a character injury.  It can be difficult to prove because it doesn’t necessarily result in a physical injury that can be photographed or otherwise physically documented. Defamation affects the reputation of the victim in a damaging way, or the livelihood of the victim in direct response to having his or her reputation denigrated. Moreover, the successful case for defamation of character is predicated on the assertion that the victim, is in fact, not guilty of the libel (a written form of defamation) or slander (a verbal form of defamation) that has been thrown at him.

For instance, if a man named Bill keeps twenty apartment buildings in Los Angeles in clear slum-like conditions and a tenant named Joseph writes to the local newspaper and calls Bill a slum lord, then that does not constitute “defamation”. That’s truth. So Bill, the slumlord, cannot win a defamation of character lawsuit against Joseph for saying something that is essentially indisputably true.   Bill is a slumlord because of the manner in which he conducts his business, and Joseph simply pointed it out. Even if ‘outing’ Bill in the newspaper directly affects his otherwise good reputation in Los Angeles, he has no defamation case against Joseph. So it’s not defamation, if the accusation is known to be true, even though Joseph’s intent was to ‘out’ Bill as a slumlord to ruin his otherwise good reputation.

In a case in Los Angeles, however, the opposite is also true.  Lyle McGrazer, 69, had a bone to pick with a Olivia Warenthal, owner of a successful neighborhood restaurant. Warenthal enjoyed the good will of the entire neighborhood and her café was thought of as a community gathering spot where people had been going for years.  In spite of that, McGrazer loudly accused Warenthal’s head cook of having hepatitis and infecting the patrons.  This essentially cleared her restaurant that night and for many weeks afterward as fear spread about what McGrazer had said. The truth was, the head cook did not have hepatitis and there was no basis for this slanderous lie.  It damaged her business for months until the lie could be cleared up. Olivia Warenthal located a Los Angeles defamation attorney and sued Lyle McGrazer for defamation and was able to prove character injury because Lyle had made the story up with no basis in truth and his lie had directly resulted in a financial injury to her business and undermined her reputation.

Like Warenthal’s case, Los Angeles defamation cases often do not make it all the way to the courtroom. Mostly, a Los Angeles defamation attorney will settle these cases before the defamation case goes to trial.  In Los Angeles, settlements are reached with parties or insurance companies. Rarely is a case of defamation of character heard before a judge or jury, though high profile cases sometimes are. We’ve all heard about the cases of character injury brought by celebrities against rag magazines who routinely straddle the edge between truth and fiction.  A well known actor with Cancer had to sue a well-known gossip magazine when they repeatedly reported he was ‘near death,’ or ‘on his deathbed’ when, all the while, he was working in Los Angeles, fighting the disease.  In this case, the actor won his defamation case against the paper, because they were, in fact, damaging his potential to earn a living by claiming he was near death. The actor had to prove also, that the statements were made with “actual malice”, which meant that the newspaper knew their claims to be patently false.

Interestingly, some people are protected from suits of defamation of character. Witnesses on the stand, legislators on the legislative floor and serving judges are protected from accusation of slander or libel, despite what they say. They can make outrageous comments, or flat out lies, but there is no recourse in a court of law against them.

Opinions are another category of Los Angeles defamation of character lawsuits.  Melanie Jonas worked for an advertising agency in Los Angeles. A co-worker who disliked Melanie expressed her opinion to a co-worker at the agency this way: “Melanie is an idiot.” That is an opinion, but one not likely to harm Melanie in her job or anywhere else. It’s not an actionable slander. However, if her boss, who wanted to get rid of her, said of Melanie, “Melanie is a pathological liar,” then – unless this was provably true, or known to be true – that would likely be considered a defamation of character, because it could feasibly hurt Melanie’s job prospects and was not true.

If you have been the victim of defamation in Los Angeles and are considering bringing a lawsuit against someone for defamation of your character, hire an experienced Los Angeles personal injury attorney who specializes in defamation cases.  An experienced Los Angeles defamation attorney can help you sort through the facts to see if you have a case.