A lot of times we have heard of defamation of character lawsuits trending on social media and some of us do not really understand what this concept entails and the legal aspects that needs to be proved in court.
Defamation of character is defined as an unlawful publication of statement made by a person that affects the good name or social standing or perceived status or dignity of another.
Two elements must be proved; that a conduct to defame (to insult/offend) another party occurred based on false statement or facts that cannot be proved. These statements are malicious in intent and therefore regarded unlawful. Secondly, such defamation was published (made accessible and public knowledge on any platform e.g. newspaper, twitter, Facebook, Instagram, podcast, Tv, Radio etc).
An example of defamatory statements can include the following: that an individual is corrupt, dishonest, promiscuous, criminal (a rapist, swindler, human trafficker etc), “slut”, sleeps with married men or married women, incompetent, broke, HIV positive or that they “moered” someone etc.
However, the defamer can raise the following defence;
Recently on social media on or about early April 2022, daily sun news outlet went on Instagram to publish a statement that the South African Hip-hop royalty AKA also known by his real name as Kiernan Forbes, “moered” (physically assaulted) a female rapper/hip-hop artist Nadia Nakai while attending an event in Ghana. The two parties went on to sue the news outlet for false and defamation of character to the value of R 800,000.00 as such statements implied domestic violence. This is following the tragic fatal incident of AKA’s ex-girlfriend which spiked allegations on social media of domestic violence. The newspaper outlet went on to retract and delete such posts on social media.
In a more recent international case of defamation which have attracted millions of viewers in the matter between Amber Heard and her ex-husband, an international acclaimed Hollywood actor Johnny Dep one can see the consequences of abusing freedom of media. Amber heard went on a newspaper and wrote an op-ed alleging being a victim of domestic violence and have suffered physical, emotional and sexual abuse from her estranged husband. Mr Dep went to deny such allegations and proved that such defamatory remarks resulted in damaging his longstanding career as an actor. On the 1st of June 2022 the jury awarded Mr Dep $10 million in compensatory damage and a capped $ 5 million in punitive damages which was capped to $350 000.00.
Therefore, think before you attack someone’s character on social media. The legal consequences also extends to anyone who shares such a defamatory post, retweets or forward it or republish it in any platform.
BY RAMATSITSI ATTORNEYS
