Alaska Employment Law

The Ninth Circuit recently ruled on a defamation claim brought by SDV/ACCI, Inc., and its owner officers against AT&T and one of its employees, Margaret Roman.  AT&T often failed to pay its bills to the plaintiff company, which provided consulting services to AT&T.  The plaintiff owners complained to AT&T through Defendant Roman, who reminded the plaintiffs that AT&T was very powerful and if they dropped the contract, it would appear the company could not meet its service obligations to AT&T.  When AT&T continued not to pay, the plaintiffs gave Roman notice they were going to terminate the contract.  In response to Roman’s insinuations that his company was in financial trouble, Plaintiff Metz made it clear to her that the only difficulty SDV/ACCI had was its contract with AT&T.  Roman asked plaintiffs not to speak to AT&T managers about ending the contract, but then wrote an email to the managers stating that the plaintiff company was having financial difficulties and could no longer provide services for AT&T; she sent a similar email to an SDV/ACCI competitor as well. 

The court, construing California defamation law, considered whether the owner-officers of the company could sue, when they were not specifically mentioned by name in the email, only SDV/ACCI was mentioned.   The plaintiff owners argued that there could be no question the email referred to them personally.  The court held that a defamation plaintiff must affirmatively demonstrate that third parties understood the defamatory statements to reference the particular plaintiffs as distinct from their corporation to be actionable.

The court allowed the claims by SDV/ACCI to proceed despite AT&T’s assertion of the common interest privilege .  Although the privilege potentially applies, questions of fact remain as to whether malice was the AT&T employee’s primary reason to include the defamation in her emails, and whether she lacked a good faith belief in the truth of her statement.

SDV/ACCI, Inc., G. and T Metz v. AT&T and M. Roman, ___F.3rd___, No. 06-15860, slip op. at 3817 (Ninth Cir. April 11, 2008).