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Can inferences be truth?

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cyberphonics

Registered User
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law) IL ?

hi all. someone on twitter was writing lots that weren't true because of issues he has. i wrote to him telling him that he needs to focus on himself and stop writing all of these things that aren't even true and are just making people mad just because he's upset and wants to believe that whatever he says is ok.

he threatened to sue me for defamation. i think im right that i can't be sued for def because i was writing to him not to anyone else about him but just in case, if some of the things i said to him are things i inferred were true from what he said and there's proof that anyone else would infer the same thing from reading what he said, can that be proof in court that they're true?

like if he kept writing about punching and smashing things all the time over little things and how he couldn't control himself so i said he needs to get help with his anger mgmt issues, if anyone else who read what he wrote would also believe it's true that he has anger mgmt issues, can i defend myself that it's true even though its not like anyone diagnosed him or anything?

thank you :p
 


cyberphonics

Registered User
oh because some of the untrue things he's tweeting involve me and my friends. real world friends not online friends. so we told him to stop and he's been doing it for months. i didn't say anything at first because they werent about me but he added me in just because im friends with these other people so i wrote to him saying he needs to stop all of this and just focus on himself instead of spreading lies about other people.

it wouldnt be a big deal but because he's been doing it so long we're starting to get harassed on there by people who think what he's saying about us is true which is how we knew he was still telling lies about us for all this time. the lies he started telling about me were that i swindle people at my job. he doesnt know anything about me or my job, he just saw that one of the other people mentioned that i was his good friend and decided he would target me too because of it.

then he said that i swindle people at my job because he looked at my bio and saw that i work at a bank. no one knows that this person is just some random guy who is just making things up because he's upset, people are now coming to us thinking he actually knows us and that what he's saying is true.

but im not here about that. im here about him saying he wants to sue ME for defaming him by telling him that he needs to stop this because he's just lying about people because he's upset and needs to get help with his anger mgmt issues. i dont think im defaming him by telling him he's just lying because he's upset and has anger issues if anyone else who read his tweets would think the same thing so thats what im asking. is that a valid defense to prove i honestly thought it was true that he has a temper problem?
 
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quincy

Senior Member
He can sue you. Anyone can sue.

As for inferences, if a considerable segment of a particular community can draw the same conclusions from a publication, then there can be actionable defamation. In other words, if what you say leads others to a false and defamatory conclusion about an individual, that individual may have enough to support a defamation suit, should the other elements required for a defamation suit be present.

One element required for defamation is that a publication be made to a "third party." Saying something defamatory about a person to the person himself would not meet the publication element and, therefore, could not lead to a successful defamation action. However, saying something defamatory about another person could.

Everything in law is fact specific, what exactly is said matters, and context is important.

I think that those who are twittering about others should probably knock it off.
 

cyberphonics

Registered User
Thank you. Because I was talking to him and not to other people about him it seemed weird he jumped to defamation.

you sort of answered my question about inferences but im not clear on the other half. i get that if i make a false statement about someone and someone else infers it's true that it can be defamatory.

what im asking is if i made a statement that i believed to be true based on what the person said himself and any other person would have drawn the same conclusion i did from what he said himself, can i use that as an argument of truth?

i ask because i read somewhere that in a defamation case, a statement you made thinking it was true can be treated as true by the court in terms of your defense if any other reasonable person would also have thought it was true. not from you saying it, but from drawing the same conclusion you did.

like if you walk by a guy and you hear him talking to himself and he's talking about how he's going to kill himself because life is meaningless so you tell someone else that he's suicidal and it turns out that he was just acting out scenes from a play or something on his own so he takes you to court saying you falsely called him suicidal.

yes, it's true that he's not suicidal, but i read that if any other reasonable person who walked by would have drawn that same conclusion from hearing what he was saying and seeing his manner, my statement that he's suicidal can be treated as if it were true in a legal sense, not in reality, in my defense that at the time, i couldn't reasonably have known i was making a false statement.

i don't know if that made sense the way i explained it, but i read that somewhere, so i wanted to know if it was true or not.
 

quincy

Senior Member
I understand what you are saying and, yes, truth, substantial truth, and even a belief that what you are saying is true can all be used as a defense to defamation.

However, whether the "belief in the truth of a statement" will fly as a defense will depend on all of the facts presented in court. It may work, and then again it may not.

In other words, statements such as the type you gave in your example can often be "excused" as not defamatory, because they were based on a "reasonable" belief in their truth. Others could reasonably have come to the same conclusion based on the same set of facts. But again, everything in law is fact specific and any court determination would be based on all of the facts.
 

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