Summary
The court's reasoning Bob Ambrogi, an attorney and the executive director of the Massachusetts Newspaper Association, wrote on his blog that the Noonan ruling is "the most dangerous libel decision in decades," because of the court's finding that truth is not always a defense to libel and the adoption of a common law definition of actual malice. [...] the attorneys argued, since that decision, no court in Massachusetts has relied on the statute to find that a truthful statement can be libelous.
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Truth Defense Dinged; Now What?
It is one of the most basic tenants of media law: Truthful statements cannot be libelous, because a libelous statement must be both false and defamatory.
But a recent decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston (1st Cir.) has suggested that the principle is not as absolute as believed, upholding a 1902 statute that undermines the truth defense.In Noomn v. Staples, the court ruled that under Massachusetts law, true statements on matters of purely private concern can be libelous if published maliciously. Additionally, the...See the full content of this document
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