“Opinion, Not Defamation, Says Court” – Habitat Case Watch
WHAT HAPPENED: This case arises out of postings allegedly made by the defendants in a private online forum for residents of the plaintiff Trump Village Section 4, Inc., a cooperative complex located in Coney Island, New York. The summons and complaint were filed on June 13, 2023. The complaint alleges that the defendants Alexander Kats, Violeta Luca, and two unknown individuals with the online usernames “ME” and “ANONYMOUS,” made various postings in an online forum known as OneRoof. The complaint further alleges that these postings defamed the plaintiff Igor Oberman, the general manager and assistant secretary of TV4. The complaint describes OneRoof as a “phone application and website where “[a]nyone with an app-assigned building code” could write and read “community-minded posts.” Kats and Luca are both residents of TV4. It is unknown if ME and ANONYMOUS are residents of the building. The complaint alleges that all defendants wrote various defamatory messages on OneRoof, accusing TV4’s board and Oberman of accepting kickbacks for co-op projects, theft, harassment, mismanagement and ineptitude, and engaging in illegality and corruption.
Both Kats and Luca filed pre-answer motions to dismiss the complaint against them. Both motions share in the arguments that the statements attributed to Kats and Luca, when viewed in the context they were posted, are not slanderous per se or defamatory. Kats goes further to point out that the plaintiffs had not pleaded any special damages, and therefore could maintain their causes of action under the theory that the statements were slanderous per se. In opposition, the plaintiff argued that the statements attributed to the defendants are statements of “fact,” not opinion, or at the very least “mixed opinion” and therefore actionable.
IN COURT: The court found the plaintiffs failed to state a cause of action for damages and dismissed the complaint, finding that the plaintiff had not alleged the requisite special damages or alleged any specific facts, anything other than “opinions” which did not support a defamation cause of action. “Some of the allegedly defamatory statements constituted rhetorical hyperbole, some lacking in precise meaning, and some were not capable of being proven true or false” and thus did not support a defamation claim.
The defendants sought attorney’s fees, but the court did not find the action involved “public petition and participation” such as would support a claim under New York’s Anti-SLAPP statute (Civil Rights Law §§70-a, 76-a) and, as such, there was no award of attorney fees or damages to defendants warranted.
The appellate court affirmed the trial court decision and reasoning adding that “reasonable readers would have concluded that they were reading opinions rather than facts.” Likewise, the appellate court found no attorney fees award was appropriate since the suit did not involve issues of the “public interest” but only “to a limited, private audience . . . .”
TAKEAWAY: Whether statements are “facts” (that state a legal cause) or “opinions” (that do not) is a common battleground in the world of libel law as applicable to co-ops and condominiums, and elsewhere. Bottom line: A claimant/plaintiff needs to be as specific as possible in setting forth the objectionable statements a defendant made trying to allege a claim for defamation. Alleging “harassment” and “ineptitude” won’t do it. The underlying policy the courts are mindful of surely is the “floodgates” argument and concerns—to wit, is there anyone who can’t just allege “harassment” and thus keep a court busy with a libel claim?
