Did I commit defamation?
I work for a small firm of about 10 people. I had a situation where the Vice President of my company took a new female employee to lunch for 3.5 hours and when they came back were completely drunk. The female employee could hardly walk and couldn't even write an email and asked me to help her. Being very concerned for her well being two other co workers and I offered to go back to the bar and get her vehicle and take her home. The V.P. prevented us from doing this and said that He would take her back to her car so they could have more drinks. As you can imagine the rest of the office was very concerned and angry about his conduct and actions. I told a friend that works for a competitor about what happened. Some how it got back to my employer that I told my friend about this incident and ever since I have been treated horribly. They act as if they are on the verge of firing me. Did I commit defamation by telling my friend this?
1 answer | asked Aug 8, 2006 01:58 AM [EST] | applies to Arizona
Answers (1)
Defamation is the publication of false information that injures a person's reputation. When the information that is published is true, it is not defamatory, although it may still cause injury to one's reputation. Another legal claim closely related to defamation is invasion of privacy. There are several forms of invasion of privacy, but the one involved in this instance is the publication of private information about someone that, although true, still causes the person embarassment, humiliation or loss of reputation. The information has to be truly private. A person has an expectation of privacy with respect to such information as medical records, personnel records, family matters and so on. But I doubt that your boss could claim that his inappropriate behavior in front of all those employees could be protected by any reasonable expectation of privacy.
Your concern about possible firing is legitimate. If you are an at-will employee, your employer doesn't need a reason to fire you, so your job security may be in jeopardy because you told others about the incident. There is no public policy that protects you from termination for this unfortunate slip of the tongue. You may have a claim against your boss if he uses his authority to fire you for a purely personal reason unrelated to the employer's legitimate concerns. This claim, called interference with contractual relations, requires proof that the boss's actions caused you to lose your job and that the boss acted "improperly," a term that involves weighing a variety of factors, including his motive, the manner in which he went about it, the social benefit of allowing or prohibiting his acts, and other factors.
posted by Francis Fanning | Aug 8, 2006 5:35 PM [EST]
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