Opinion ID: 218859
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Discovery and the defamation claim

Text: As mentioned above, when the Station Defendants sought summary judgment on Murphy‟s defamation claim, he filed a motion pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(f) (now 56(d)). Such a motion is, of course, the proper recourse of a party faced with a motion for summary judgment who believes that additional discovery is necessary before he can adequately respond to that motion. Doe v. Abington Friends School, 480 F.3d 252, 257 (3d Cir. 2007). “District courts usually grant properly filed Rule 56(f) motions as a matter of course. This is particularly so when there are discovery requests outstanding or relevant facts are under the control of the moving party.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). The standard of appellate review is abuse of discretion. Renchenski v. Williams, 622 F.3d 315, 339 (3d Cir. 2010). A claim of defamation under New Jersey law generally requires an analysis closely grounded in the facts of the individual case. “As a general rule, a statement is defamatory if it is false, communicated to a third person, and tends to lower the subject‟s reputation in the estimation of the community or to deter third persons from associating with him.” Lynch v. N.J. Educ. Ass’n, 161 N.J. 152, 164-65 (1999). “In determining whether the statements are defamatory, we must consider the content, verifiability, and context of the challenged statements.” Ward v. Zelikovsky, 136 N.J. 516, 529 (1994). should be any different from the analysis for the posting on the WKXW website. 28 In this case, Murphy has been able to obtain only limited information about the fundamental basis of his claim, that is, the actual statements Carton and Rossi made on air about him. The Station Defendants destroyed their recording of the show shortly after airing, and no transcript has been produced. In such circumstances, in order for Murphy to make out his claim, it would obviously be essential for him to depose the people who made the statements in the first place, that is, Carton and Rossi. Yet, despite his timely attempts to schedule them for depositions, he was unable to do so before the District Court granted summary judgment against him. The Station Defendants have spent little time rebutting the specific arguments offered by Murphy as to why the information he sought was relevant to the resolution of their summary judgment motion. Instead, they argue that Murphy could not have been harmed in any way by the foreclosure of discovery because, for the purposes of resolving that motion, the District Court accepted as true all allegations made in the complaint. This argument is peculiar, as it implies that, in effect, Murphy was obligated to plead in his complaint not merely sufficient facts to state his claim for the purposes of Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b), but also to survive summary judgment. The Station Defendants cite no precedent for this approach, and we are aware of none. Unfortunately, the District Court offered essentially no analysis in its order denying Murphy‟s 56(f) motion, leaving it unclear what, if any, additional analytic basis its denial may have had. Under these circumstances, and given that Murphy‟s arguments respecting the importance of the information he sought are plausible, it would not be 29 appropriate to defer to the District Court‟s determination on this point. Therefore, with respect to the defamation claims, the District Court‟s decision is vacated and remanded to permit Murphy to conduct adequate discovery.19 III.