But she may not want to answer. Just wondering if anyone knows. Had a discussion with a friend about this yesterday and neither of us knew. So I am trying to find out. Back story:
We were talking about my guilty pleasure Judge Judy and how litigants were always crying,"Slander" and often it is about FB posts and some of the stuff sounds pretty, well, awful. Lots of name calling and allegations. But it is always shot down. So if those posts, with identifiable names and all, are not slander....what is???
Defamation is not really my field, but slander is spoken, libel is written and both slander and libel are defamation. Basically, it's an untrue statement that damages someone's reputation. For instance, if I say my neighbor is stealing my cable and they are not, that's slander. Not only is it slander but stating someone has committed a crime (like stealing, as opposed to a non-crime, like adultery) is slander
per se. Meaning it's pretty much automatically a winnable case. But really, the amount of money for damages in most slander cases is negligible. Unless a person got arrested and had to spend money as a result, or got fired from a job or something, there's not a lot of reason to sue other than to prove a point, unless there's a lot of punitive damages.
The first rule of tort law is: Don't sue poor people; they can't pay up.
Now, if I spread it around that John Smith is having an affair, and he's not, and his wife divorces him because she believes he is, then I've probably got a lawsuit coming. Likewise if I accuse them of having a disease and they have to prove to their partner they don't be having all these medical tests, they should probably sue. If I say that about a Priest and his parishioners all refuse to attend his church anymore, I could be sued for that.
It's NOT slander if it's true. It's also NOT slander if it's an opinion. If I say, "John Smith beat his child so bad he should go to jail for it" that might be actionable. If I say, "John Smith is a bad parent and his discipline is too harsh" that's really not. That's simply my opinion, whereas the first statement is an accusation of child abuse. If I say, "Sally Jones has Borderline (BPD)" and I'm a person who should really know, like a psychologist - that's more likely a statement of fact that if I'm just a friend of Sally's and I'm giving my opinion more than likely.
Calling someone names, generally, not slander. If I say Sally is a w_ore, for instance, not really actionable. Does anyone really think she sells herself for money? Unless they are holding themselves out as pure as the driven snow, it's probably just an opinion. If no one believes it, not defamation. If I say, "Sally Jones is a lizard person from the planet Zebulon" probably not defamation. (If I
know that Sally's boss is a whack-a-doodle and I convince her boss that Sally is a lizard person out for world domination and her boss fires her or tries to kill her with lizard poison, then it's likely slander after all.)
Also, if you hold yourself out as a public figure, like president or an actor or something, much harder to prove because you EXPECT to be talked about. That's why more actors don't sue the National Enquirer, but some do...and the win. It has to be pretty bad if you're a public figure.
It's a sticky little area of the law. In my 6 years, I did one defamation suit, but left the firm before it was over. We were suing the Better Business Bureau, who did a robo-call thing that answered when anyone called about this one business (our client) and basically accused them of selling real estate without a license, which is a crime in our state. They also said other bad things about our client's methods and business practices, but it was the crime that was alleged that gave us the real big guns.
Also, it's not libel or slander if the person it's about does the sharing of it. For instance, if I write a post on here saying something slanderous (libelous) about my brother but I don't identify myself or my brother, and he finds it and shares it with the world after having outed himself as being the person it was about, that's his doing. If I write horrible things about him in a text to him, and he then publishes a screen shot on Facebook, he can't complain that what I wrote was false and damaging because there was no damage until he shared it.