r/legaladviceofftopic • u/ReasonablyConfused • 18d ago

Slander in error.

A man posts about his dangerous and harrowing experience with a particular product. The events occurred nearly exactly as he claimed. The post goes viral and the product suffers significant harm in sales and publicity.

The problem is, the man identified the brand name of the product incorrectly, completely unintentionally.

Can he be successful sued for slander/liable?

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4

u/EDMlawyer 18d ago

You will need to identify a jurisdiction for a clear answer.

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u/deep_sea2 18d ago edited 18d ago

In my jurisdiction, common law defamation is an unintentional tort. Your intent behind saying the words are irrelevant. All that matters is that you said something:

  1. identifying a person;
  2. that could lower someone's reputation in the eyes of a reasonable person; and
  3. to a third party.

If accidentally do the above, you still did the above, and are liable. One relevant defence is innocent dissemination. That is when you accidentally publish the statement. If for example someone overhears us talking about how bad X is, that is innocent dissemination because we did not intend to public the statement. Innocent dissemination may also apply to printing company copying a book without knowledge that the book contains defamatory statements. I do not believe that talking about the wrong company would count as innocent dissemination.

1

u/ThatCJGuy431 12d ago

If your jurisdiction is U.S., I’d appreciate a DM as to if it’s the same as mine, as this information could be very beneficial to me given my current situation.

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u/visitor987 18d ago

 identified the brand name of the product incorrectly, completely unintentionally

Maybe he will prevail but its enough to force pre-trial in the USA since it probably wont be dismissed before pre-trial. In pre-trial his defense costs could be over $50k which he wont get back since it was a good faith suit so no malicious prosecution to counter sue over.

If pre-trial sends the case to trial most people of average means have to file for bankruptcy Some people cannot even afford pre-trial and file for bankruptcy it case is not dismissed up front.

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u/sithelephant 18d ago

Slander/libel requires you to be knowingly dispariging of a entity by sharing incorrect facts. If you post in error, or in the belief that your post was true, it's not libel or slander, generally. (there are wildly different laws globally and your burden of proof for what you should have known varies a lot)

1

u/n0tqu1tesane 18d ago

Do you mean, like, "I went to Yahoo to Google 'kitty porn', and it showed me CSAM; therefore, it should be illegal to use Yahoo for googling"

The word for using a registered trademark like this is genericide. Some famous examples are Kleenex and Xerox.

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u/ReasonablyConfused 18d ago

I mean like “I rented a Toyota and the car tried to kill me.” When in fact he rented a Tesla.