Case Number: 1:21-CV-1722
Judge: Steve C. Jones
Court: United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia (Fulton County)
Plaintiff's Attorney:
Defendant's Attorney: Brian McKinley Underwood, Jr., Eric Schroeder, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP, Atlanta, GA, for Defendant.
Description:
Atlanta, Georgia personal injury lawyers represented the Plaintiff who sued on a defamation theory.
On February 11, 2021, Twitter1 suspended from its platform
Project Veritas (“Veritas”)—an investigative journalistic
organization most well-known for its undercover reporting.
Veritas’s suspension made headlines. On February 15, Ana
Cabrera and Brian Stelter, Cable News Network’s (“CNN”) then-
on-air talent, discussed Twitter’s ban of Veritas during a broadcast.
Their discussion, and specifically comments made by Cabrera
during their discussion, is the basis of this defamation lawsuit.
Cabrera suggested on-air that Twitter banned Veritas for
“promoting misinformation.” Veritas disagreed with this
characterization and demanded correction, contending that
Twitter banned Veritas for violating Twitter’s “publication of
private information,” or “doxxing,” policy. When CNN refused to
issue a retraction, Veritas sued for defamation. The district court
granted CNN’s motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim,
finding that Cabrera’s statements were substantially true and thus
not actionable under applicable New York defamation law. Veritas
appealed.
* * *
In New York, there are two types of defamation: (1) expres 12 Opinion of the Court 22-11270
defamation, which involves false statements, and (2) defamation by
implication, which “involves ‘false suggestions, impressions and
implications arising from otherwise truthful statements[.]’” Levin
v. McPhee, 119 F.3d 189, 196 n.5 (2d Cir. 1997) (emphasis added)
(quoting Armstrong v. Simon & Schuster, Inc., 649 N.E.2d 825, 829
(N.Y. 1995)).
In New York, the elements of a typical defamation claim
(whether express defamation or defamation by implication) are:
(1) “a false and defamatory statement concerning another”;
(2) “unprivileged publication to a third party”; (3) “fault amounting
at least to negligence on the part of the publisher”; and (4) “either
actionability of the statement irrespective of special harm,” i.e., defamation per se, “or the existence of special harm caused by the publication[.]” Franklin v. Daily Holdings, Inc., 21 N.Y.S.3d 6, 10
(N.Y. App. Div. 2015) (quotations omitted); Stepanov v. Dow Jones
& Co., 987 N.Y.S.2d 37, 44 (N.Y. App. Div. 2014). Because the
parties focus on whether Veritas has plausibly alleged that
Cabrera’s statements were false and defamatory under New York
law, we center our analysis on the fir
Outcome: Reversed and remanded.
Plaintiff's Experts:
Defendant's Experts:
Comments: