Lawyers’ Blog Posts About Litigation Were Not Defamatory in Context Presented

Blog posts and online commentary describing claims in an employment discrimination lawsuit that were attributable to lawyers representing the plaintiff were not defamatory because they were either true statements or expressions of opinion, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey ruled Oct. 23 in an opinion designated as “unpublished” (Perez v. Factory Direct of Secaucus, LLC, D.N.J., 2:13-cv-00327-DMC-JBC, 10/23/13).

When considering a claim that a purported statement was defamatory, a court must take into account how a listener or reader would reasonably interpret the statement, and that depends in part on the context in ...