"DANGEROUS DOCTOR'S" DEFAMATION DEFEAT

Libel and slander are forms of defamation. In general terms, "defamation" is a false statement that injures someone's reputation and exposes the individual to public condemnation, contempt, hatred or ridicule. If such statement is published in print, or by way of broadcast media (such as radio or TV), it is called "libel." If only spoken, it is "slander."
Reader's Digest, the country's best-selling general magazine, and Derek Burnett, one of its authors, were sued for libel and slander due to the publication of an article entitled, "Dangerous Doctors...." The piece highlighted four physicians with a high number of malpractice claims. One of those doctors, who later filed the defamation lawsuit, was reported to have paid out over $4.6 million on "a string of claims that stretch back to 1982" and faced "twice as many charges of malpractice as his peers, on average." Burnett is also said to have made "slanderous" oral statements about the physician to a reporter.
When the Reader's Digest moved to dismiss the physician's case for failing to state a basis for relief, the Orange County Supreme Court denied that request. But since the content of the publication's piece was "constitutionally protected," the Appellate Division, Second Department, "modified" the Supreme Court's denial and ended the dispute. The appellate court's decision noted as follows:

Contrary to [the doctor's] contentions, the statements challenged were not reasonably susceptible of a defamatory meaning, but rather, constituted pure opinion, and thus were constitutionally protected...A pure opinion is a statement of opinion which is accompanied by a recitation of the facts upon which it is based or does not imply that it is based upon undisclosed facts...The expressions of opinion in the article were adequately supported by a recitation of the facts upon which they were based, and did not imply that they were based on undisclosed facts....