California Labor and Employment Law

Defamation in the Workplace

Introduction

You hear it all the time: “I’m going to sue you for slander!” “You’ve defamed me, you’re going to hear from my lawyer!” “That’s libel! I’ll see you in court!” Sometimes you’ll read about a celebrity getting big dollars because a newspaper has libeled her.

So what is “slander”? “libel”? “defamation”? And can you sue on them?

Let’s start with an easy one first. Libel and slander are types of defamation. Slander is oral or spoken defamation. Libel is written defamation.

What is defamation?

Now that that’s out of the way, what is defamation? Conventional wisdom holds that it is when someone says something bad about you. But the legal meaning of defamation, the type you can sue on, is much (more…)

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Top 5 Tips: So You Want to Sue Your Boss?

So you want to sue your employer for racial discrimination, sexual harassment, whistleblower retaliation, failure to pay you your last paycheck, what have you. Now what? Here are five tips all clients should keep in mind before they pick up the phone to call a lawyer.

Tip 1: Write it, don’t say it. People think it’s enough to complain, request or report things orally to their employer. They complain about discrimination to HR over the phone. Or they tell their supervisor about a health and safety code violation. Well, what are you going to do when HR or the supervisor denies you ever talked with them? Don’t believe it? Happens all the time. Avoid the “he said, she said” by communicating with your employer by emails or send letters (certified mail, return receipt requested). (more…)

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