Section 1 Introduction

• Library: Damages 2012

Almost 100 years ago, the Supreme Court of Missouri recognized a person’s right to recover money damages for harm to the person’s reputation:

A man’s good reputation is within the protection of the law. It would be a sad commentary on the law if it did not sedulously protect a citizen’s right to a good reputation from wrongful attacks precisely as it sedulously protects his other property rights from like attacks. His life, his limb, his real estate and movables, are in the keeping of the same laws that shield his reputation.

Orchard v. Globe Printing Co., 144 S.W. 812, 814 (Mo. 1912). While many rules concerning recovery of reputational damages have changed since Orchard, the tenet that a person’s reputation is worthy of legal protection has not. This chapter provides an overview of the categories of reputational damages, when and to what extent these damages may be...