Companies are increasingly facing defamation claims from former workers, along with being sued for discrimination and wrongful termination. According to the Recorder, the defamation claim usually accuses the organization of giving inaccurate reasons for firing an employee.
The employment sphere isn’t the only place one might find defamation claims due to social media and review websites, according to Internet law attorney Karl Kronenberger.
L. Julius Turman, a Reed Smith partner and attorney, said that 60 to 70 percent of his wrongful termination and harassment cases incorporated defamation claims.
In a suit by Robert Sallustio, a defamation claim made a large difference in the outcome of his case. Sallustio argued that Kemper Independence Insurance Co. fired him after wrongly claiming that he wasn’t attending work in the morning. He won his defamation judgement in the California case last year, which was nearly $5.7 million, despite losing his retaliation and wrongful termination claims.
Article via ABA Journal, 27 May 2015
Photo: construction via J J [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]