Luther Haynes and Dorothy Haynes v. Alfred A. Knopf, Incorporated, and Nicholas Lemann

How courts have described this case

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

• holding that an author’s statement that the plaintiff decided to abandon one woman for another based on financial reasons was not actionable in defamation because it did not express “objectively verifiable facts”
• concluding that “[t]he allegedly false facts about [Haynes] were variants of the true that did not paint him in a worse light[,]” and therefore “[t]hey were . . . substantially true”
• stating that a plaintiff who shows defamation per se does not have to prove special damages
• describing former category as “malfeasance or misfeasance in the performance of an office or a job” and latter as “unfitness for one’s profession or trade”
• reversing summary judgment for defendant on retaliatory 9 hostile work environment claim where plaintiff experienced verbal abuse, pranks, false 10 accusation of misconduct, and isolation by supervisors
• noting in a suit for invasion of privacy that \[t]he core ... of privacy law ... is the protection of those intimate physical details the publicizing of which would not be merely embarrassing and painful but deeply shocking to the average person subjected to such exposure\

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).