Supreme Court denies claim for posting defamatory pictures of employee

July 29, 2008

The Court of Appeals had unanimously ruled that an employee could sue management employees who allowed the posting, in a conspicuous location, of photographs that suggested the plaintiff had AIDS and had transmitted it to "hundreds" of young boys.  The Supreme Court ruled this week that since the Plaintiff acknowledged that the posting may have been intended as a joke, and since the employer did not have intent to injure him, he could not pursue a claim for defamation or invasion of privacy.
We are surprised that the Supreme Court did not consider the employer's intention to be a question of fact, particularly where, as here, the publication was defamatory per se.  It does not take a genius to recognize that calling someone an AIDS-afflicted pedophile is substantially certain to cause injury.   The case is Wright v. Micro Electronics, Inc. and Nunez and Angelucci.