Opinion ID: 3134239
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Ill 2d at 16. The cases upon which the defendant relies in this

Text: regard are easily distinguished from the present case. For instance, in Flip Side, Inc. v. Chicago Tribune Co., 206 Ill. App. 3d 641 (1991), the plaintiff, Flip Side Corporation, claimed that it was defamed by events described in a Dick Tracy comic strip. The appellate court reviewed the comic series and found that the persons and events described therein were so fantastic that no reasonable person would believe that they stated actual facts or described actual events. The court noted that the characters' names (i.e., A.M. and F.M. Stereo, Themesong, Flipside, Victor Promomo, and Sam Catchem) and the events described (e.g., murders perpetrated by means of a black box that emits high frequency sound waves that destroy the inner ear, causing convulsions and death by heart attack) were so fanciful that no one would interpret the comic strip as describing actual people and events. Flip Side, Inc., 206 Ill. App. 3d at 655. The court noted that the fact that the episode appeared only on pages of the newspaper devoted solely to comic strips fortified its conclusion that the characters and events were not intended to depict actual persons and events. Here, although the story Bryson is labeled as fiction, the story itself is not so fanciful or ridiculous that no reasonable person would interpret it as describing actual persons or events. Compare Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46, 50, 57, 99 L. Ed. 2d 41, 48, 53, 108 S. Ct. 878, 879, 883 (1988) (jury concluded that Hustler ad parody could not reasonably be understood as describing actual facts about Falwell or actual events in which he participated). On the contrary, the story here portrays realistic characters responding in a realistic manner to realistic events. A reasonable reader could logically conclude that the author of the story had drawn upon her own experiences as a teenager when writing the story. Under the circumstances, we must reject the defendants' claim that the story cannot reasonably be interpreted as stating actual facts simply because it is labeled fiction. In sum, we hold that the allegations in the plaintiff's complaint are sufficient to state a cause of action for defamation per se. The statement in the article that Bryson was a slut falls within the class of statements deemed actionable per se under section 1 of the Libel and Slander Act, because it amounted to a charge of fornication. Moreover, we are not persuaded that there is a reasonable innocent construction for the statement that would remove it from the actionable per se category. Finally, we conclude that the statement may reasonably be interpreted as stating an actual fact and therefore falls outside the protection of the first amendment. Accordingly, we reverse the trial court's dismissal of counts I and II of the complaint.