Plaintiffs filed defamation action against defendant-newspaper, arising out of article that described state-court judicial proceeding that recounted that several trust beneficiaries successfully removed plaintiff as de facto trustee of $3 million fund. In state-court proceeding, court concluded that plaintiff violated his fiduciary duties, and although it did not determine whether plaintiff had committed criminal act, it ordered him to pay beneficiaries’ litigation expenses because his conduct “amounted to something of bad faith, fraud or deliberate dishonesty.” While plaintiffs asserted that article was defamatory in four areas, Dist. Ct. could properly find that plaint5iff could not proceed in three areas, where article was substantially true and was largely protected by judicial-proceeding privilege in said areas. Moreover, Dist. Ct. could properly grant defendant’s summary judgment motion with respect to claim that article improperly implicated that plaintiff committed elder abuse, where Ct. of Appeals held that: (1) any implication of elder abuse arising out of plaintiff’s handling of elderly man’s trust was substantially true; and (2) reasonable jury could not conclude that article’s observation about relationship between plaintiff’s conduct and elderly abuse constituted false statement.
Federal 7th Circuit Court
Civil Court
Defamation