Sweeney v. Prisoners' Legal Services of New York, Inc.

How courts have described this case

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

• dismissing correction officer’s claim that he was defamed by allegations that he abused prisoners because “[t]here was no direct evidence that defendants were aware that [the] claim against [defendant] was false” and as a result he could not establish actual malice
• “[T]he failure to investigate [an allegedly defamatory statement’s] truth, standing alone, is not enough to prove actual malice even if a prudent person would have investigated before publishing the statement.”
• “Absent some direct evidence that defendants in this case were aware that Mays’ complaint was probably false, they cannot be found to have harbored an intent to avoid the truth.”
• “Actual malice means that defendants published the false information about plaintiff with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” (citation and quotation omitted)

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).