Defamation via blog

[Dalua75]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? NY

My question is, if a person has a blog that states information that is true about another person can the "blogger" use that person's name within the blog?
The situation is this. A friend of mine was involved in a domestic dispute over a year ago (which was totally wrong on the end of my friend). The situation was brought to court and handled appropriately. The victim is now blogging the details of this ordeal and has used my friends name in the blog. In addition the blogger is stating that their child was also physically harmed......which is completely not true! This was a situation that occurred between the couple.
I'm sure the blogger has the right to state information & details of the ordeal but do they have the right to use someone's full name, and is there any legal action to be taken regarding the aspect of untrue information regarding the child who wasn't involved?
The point is not to have the blog itself removed....simply to get the blogger to remove my friends name from it along with the lies regarding the involvement of the child.What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?

[quincy]

Someone can be legally allowed to publish information about another person and still be sued over the publication of the information. Whenever real names are used, in a blog or elsewhere, the person using those real names runs a risk. The risks come from the persons whose names are used and the risks come primarily in the form of defamation and invasion of privacy actions.

Publishing true information would not be defamatory. Court records, including names, can generally be published without fear of losing any defamation suit that may arise (this does not PREVENT a lawsuit, however). A defamation action could legitimately come from comments made about the court records. There is a fine line between stating opinions based on a court action, and implying false facts about the court action.

If it is only true information that is published, this eliminates the risk of the publisher losing any defamation action, but the publication of true information can spawn an invasion of privacy action. The invasion of privacy actions most likely to be filed over the publication of true information would be a publication of private facts suit or a false light privacy suit.

Although information contained in public records rarely leads to a successful disclosure of private facts suit (as information contained in public records is for the most part not private), this is not true for all cases. It can depend on how the record is disclosed, how old the record is, and whether any information is disclosed that has been redacted from the "publicly available" record (ie. names of juveniles, names of victims, settlement details).

A false light suit could arise if the public record is published in a way that presents any named individual in a false way - for instance, if an arrest record is published without additional information showing that the arrest did not lead to charges, or that all charges were dismissed. This is similar to a defamation action, but the information published is true and not false, although it leads a reader to draw false conclusions.

Any FALSE and defamatory information that is published on a blog can lead to a successful defamation action, depending on what exactly has been published and what reputational injury can be demonstrated. If the blogger has published false information about child abuse, that could be defamatory per se, and reputational injury (as well as damages) can be presumed.

A review by an attorney of the blog in question would be wise. A cease and desist letter can be sent by the attorney to the blogger, advising the blogger of legal action that can be pursued against him over any content that is not protected by the First Amendment, if he does not remove the material from his blog.