Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20-297_4g25.pdf
Page Number: 47

16 

TRANSUNION LLC v. RAMIREZ 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

avoid  FCRA  liability  “by  simply  contracting  with  a  third 
party  to  store  and  maintain  information”).    Respondent
adds to this by pointing out that TransUnion published this 
information to vendors that printed and sent the mailings. 
See Brief for Respondent 16; see also App. 161 (deposition 
testimony explaining that “a printed credit report . . . would 
have been sent through our print vendor through the mail 
and  delivered  to  the  consumer  requesting  the  file  disclo-
sure); id., at 545 (trial testimony identifying three different 
print-vendor companies that worked with TransUnion dur-
ing the relevant time period).  In the historical context of 
libel,  publication  to  even  a  single  other  party  could  be 
enough to give rise to suit.  This was true, even where the 
third  party  was  a  telegraph  company,6  an  attorney,7  or  a 
stenographer  who  merely  writes  the  information  down.8 

—————— 

6 Munson v. Lathrop, 96 Wis. 386, 389, 71 N. W. 596, 597 (1897) (“The 
writing of the message, and the delivery of it by him to the [telegraph] 
company for transmission, as mentioned, was a publication of the same”). 
7 Hedgepeth  v.  Coleman,  183  N. C.  309,  312–313,  111  S. E.  517,  519 
(1922) (“[I]t has been held that the publication was sufficient where the 
defendant  had  communicated  the  defamatory  matter  to  the  plaintiff ’s 
agent, or attorney; or had read it to a friend before posting it to the plain-
tiff; or had procured it to be copied, or sealed in the form of a letter ad-
dressed to the plaintiff and  left in the house of a neighbor by whom it 
was read; or had caused it to be delivered to and read by a member of the 
plaintiff ’s family”). 

8 Rickbeil v. Grafton Deaconess Hospital, 74 N. D. 525, 542 (1946) (“We 
hold that the dictating of this letter by the manager to the stenographer 
and  her  transcription  of  her  notes  into  the  written  instrument  consti-
tutes publication within the purview of the law of libel: whether the re-
lationship be that of master and servant or of coemployees of a corpora-
tion”); see also Larimore v. Blaylock, 259 Va. 568, 573, 528 S. E. 2d 119, 
122 (2000) (rejecting an argument of “absolute protection of the ‘intra-
corporate immunity doctrine’ ” for defamatory statements); but see Swin-
dle  v.  State,  10  Tenn.  581,  582  (1831)  (“ ‘A  personal  libel  is  published
when it arrives to the person against whom it is written, pursuant to the 
design of the author, or is made known to any other person, by any means
to which the dissent of the author is not necessarily implied’ ” (emphasis
added)).