Carolyn Cordelia Miles v. Renee Hardy

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• noting that under New York law, a defamation plaintiff must either establish special damages or that the challenged statements were defamatory per se
• setting forth the similar elements of a cause of action for libel under New York law
• noting that “actual malice means ‘with knowledge that [the defamatory statement] was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not’” and must be “supported by clear and convincing proof”
• clarifying that “[w]hether a particular statement constitutes fact or opinion is a question of law” and “[i]f the [defamatory] statement reasonably would be understood as implying undisclosed facts then it is not protected opinion”
• explaining that circumstantial evidence “should provide evidence of negligence, motive and intent such that an accumulation of the evidence and appropriate inferences supports the existence of actual malice.” (internal quotation marks and emphasis omitted)
• explaining that special damages related to harm to a reputation “consist of the loss of something having economic or pecuniary value which must flow directly from the injury to reputation caused by the defamation”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).