Category: Defamation

LabMD Inc. v. Boback, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 24413 (3rd Cir. August 30, 2022) (Jordan, C.J.)  It is really a complex case.  LabMD alleges that Tiversa, Boback and Johnson violated various laws, including RICO.  It is alleged that they lied about how and where Tiversa found a file, supposedly of compromised names so as to induce LabMD to purchase Tiversa’s incident response services.  Secondly, it is alleged that by using the file of names in Johnson’s research paper on data leaks in the medical field, and third by turning it over to the FTC after Lab refused to hire Tiversa, they committed business torts.  The District Court dismissed the RICO claims of being time-barred and the Circuit Court agreed with that conclusion.  The court went through the elements of a RICO claim.  It is claimed by LabMD that Tiversa used fraudulent representations to cause the FTC to investigate and bring an enforcement action against LabMD, which ultimately shut down LabMD.  The court looked at when this all occurred, and said that LabMD knew or should have known by 2010 that Tiversa was the source of injuries flowing from the FTC’s…

DEFAMATION-INCOMPLETE STATEMENTS LACKING IN INTEGRITY Meyers v. Certified Guaranty Company, 2019 Pa. Super. LEXIS 1041 (October 28, 2019) Pellegrini, J.  Lower court dismissed the case on summary judgment.  Statements suggested that Meyers was incompetent and lacking in integrity.  The statements were said to be false. As held by Pennslvania courts, a statement qualified by the speaker as being only an opinion may nevertheless be considered a statement of fact if it could “reasonably be interpreted” as such by the audience.  See Braig v. Field Communications, 310 Pa. Super. 569, 456 A.2d 1366, 1373 (Pa. Super. 1983).  An opinion can be defamatory if is misleading or based on undisclosed facts which are not true.  Id. The crux of the statements on the message board was that Meyers was recreating value comic books and passing them off as “restored”.  The question is for a jury as to whether the message board and verbal statements to third parties were based on true facts. A trier of fact could determine that all of the subject communications were either statements of fact not verified to be true or mixed opinions based on misleading or undisclosed…