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Libel or Defamation?

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jdawg83

Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? VA/MA


Most recently an article was published about me in a newspaper in July 2008. The author of this paper has written extensively about the housing crisis and the problems that led to the housing crisis in a particular community. I have read many of his articles and from the stories that he has written he makes accusations based off of facts, but also draws his own conclusions based off of his interpretation of those facts. This is a direct quote from one of his articles (names of cities and persons omitted for anonymity):

A review of more than 200 conversions over the last two years in (city omitted) - mostly in (neighborhoods omitted) - shows more than 100 foreclosure filings against owners who bought more than one unit, sometimes in the same building. Names that appear as unit buyers with mortgage trouble sometimes turn up later as investors converting more units, or as people with power of attorney to represent other buyers.

One of the stand-ins is (myself), a buyer from (City i live in VA), who purchased a unit from (Seller) on (street omitted) in Lower Mills in November 2006. A foreclosure petition on the unit was filed last month. In the interim, (myself) was given power of attorney to represent buyers in seven other unit sales involving (seller)


In this article the reporter is accusing me of continuing to do business with the seller KNOWING that the seller was not doing the right thing, which is a total lie. I was working with a seller in MA, and brought property from him for myself, and it was going great so I told other people about it and then after a while I started my own company doing investment consulting, and this was early 2007. My tenant no longer qualified for section 8, and the housing market turned in MA, and it cause me to go into foreclosure because the going rent for the unit went down because of the housing market and my property manager told me that it was better to rent it out and get something than to get nothing at all, and i am now in the process of short selling it. None of the people that currently gets involved in investing through me has any problems at all in the year and a half I have been doing this. The problem is people associated this guys article with me doing the wrong thing and being a interim "stand in" for the seller (this article was published in July 2008, almost a year and a half after i started my company) and has caused detrimental harm to my company. Furthermore I have not done business with that particular seller since early 2007, before I started my own company. So can an article published in July 2008, stating that "in the interim" be true if I don't work with the guy anymore, nor have in going on two years.

I have lost out on multiple customers because people google me to look at my website and what I've done, and this article comes up. Their interpretation of the article is that even while in foreclosure I am still doing business with the seller "in the interim" of my foreclosure, and they take it to mean that I am trying to get them into the same situation that I am in, but the reporter never called me to get my side of the story or check his facts.

My other question is does this constitute Libel or Defamation?
 
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quincy

Senior Member
It is possible that there is a defamation action you could pursue, in that the article implies you are doing something irregular and, perhaps, unethical. But you would need to sit down with an attorney in your area to review the entire article, and to go over with this attorney the injuries you have suffered as a result of the article's appearance in the paper and online.

A defamation action against the newspaper, when the general facts are correct, could be difficult to win. The statements made are substantially true although, admittedly, the context in which these facts are presented seems to suggest some wrongdoing on your part.

You should understand that any libel action against a newspaper would most certainly be an expensive undertaking. And you can expect any court action to last well over a year. In other words, your time and monetary investment in a lawsuit against the paper will be significant, and there is no guarantee of a win here.

Good luck.
 

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