> In her suit, Viola acknowledged writing most of the posts. But she denied being behind the anti-Muslim screed. That was critical to Sorokin’s decision to allow the libel and defamation part of Viola’s suit to proceed. The former professor “has plausibly alleged that Benton may have been negligent in his failure to verify that she was the author,” the judge wrote.
If she can prove that it wasn't her/Benton can't prove that it was her (I'm not familiar with the legal system, so I don't know which it would be), then there would indeed be an untrue statement. As for damage; why does anyone dredge up another's darker side, if not to damage them in some way? I can't think of another motive for doing so.
Maybe you can say that she isn't notable enough that it would be valuable as news, but I don't think that standard would be hit there are a lot of reports now about Karens and such, and her being a professor adds some umph.
To confront them with the harms of their "darker side", with hopes that they will have a change of heart and desire to reform. But.. that's often misguided if one does this in public before at least making an attempt in private.
Even for public figures where the NY Times v. Sullivan “actual malice” standard applies, intentional/knowing falsity is not required; reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of the statement is sufficient for actual malice.
It’s much more relaxed: “cannot have acted negligently in failing to ascertain whether the statement is true”
To me the more interesting problem is him using his workpace Discuss mod privileges to first ID her, and then posting to his personal twitter - which seems like it's not an official org piece of reporting. At least that's what I'm reading I think - it very well could have been possible for him to ID her without that admin info?
So maybe Benton is in violation of his work's policy.
I agree though even if it wasn't true wouldn't it have to be malicious intent to cause harm?
I would probably care more about their claims and complaints if they were not so transparent about the fact that their real complaint is that people who they look down on are now in a position to judge and ostracize them.
Colin Kaepernick's situation reveals the hypocrisy, just a couple years ago.
In this case, from what I can see, the claims were largely true. You can't successfully sue for defamation of statements that are just true. Then, even if there are claims that aren't true, you have to prove the untrue statement wasn't an opinion and that it was made with the intent to say an untrue thing as if were fact in order to damage you.
EDIT: A poster below pointed out that you to make claims statements that you knew were false; there is also standing if you didn't know they were false but you didn't confirm if they were true in a manner deemed as "reckless" by the court. I believe this is a lesser burden than I described above, but still a very high bar.