Opinion ID: 801896
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Damages to Cockram's reputation

Text: Under Missouri law, proof of actual reputational harm is an absolute prerequisite in a defamation action. Kenney v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 100 S.W.3d 809, 817 (Mo.2003). Because rules of per se and per quod  defamation do not apply in Missouri, a plaintiff must always prove actual damages. Id. at 815. To demonstrate actual damages [in Missouri], plaintiffs must show that defamatory statements caused a quantifiable professional or personal injury, such as interference with job performance, psychological or emotional distress, or depression. Arthaud v. Mut. of Omaha Ins. Co., 170 F.3d 860, 862 (8th Cir.1999). [T]he question of whether a plaintiff's damages were caused by the defamatory statement is for the jury to decide, Topper v. Midwest Div., Inc., 306 S.W.3d 117, 130 (Mo.Ct.App.2010) (quoting Johnson v. Allstate Indem. Co., 278 S.W.3d 228, 235 (Mo.Ct.App.2009)), unless a court can determine that a plaintiff failed to meet her burden of production, see Nazeri v. Mo. Valley Coll., 860 S.W.2d 303, 314 (Mo.1993). Genesco argues that it is entitled to summary judgment because Cockram failed to present any evidence that Genesco's statements caused her reputational damage and cannot differentiate between damages that she allegedly sustained as a result of Genesco's statements and damages resulting from the media's coverage of the receipt incident before Genesco published any statements. When the facts are viewed in the light most favorable to Cockram and all reasonable inferences are made in her favor, see BP Group, Inc. v. Kloeber, 664 F.3d 1235, 1239 (8th Cir. 2012), the evidence is sufficient to allow a reasonable jury to find actual reputational harm flowing from Genesco's statements. Cockram argues that there are multiple pieces of evidence indicating that her reputation was harmed by Genesco's statements. She stated that [p]eople posting comments to media stories carrying Genesco's statement would call me racist. For example, one person writing a comment in response to an online article containing Genesco's first statement said that a racist teenager entered the words on their [sic] own and was rightfully fired. Cockram also received numerous messages containing threats and accusations of racism after Genesco released the first statement. Cockram claims that these accusations and threats made [her] afraid and [she] moved out of [her] apartment and placed [her] child with [her] parents temporarily. Cockram's father confirmed that Cockram was so concerned about the threats that she asked him to allow her daughter to live with him for a period. Furthermore, Cockram's father stated that his family's friends and acquaintances contacted him and questioned whether Cockram was racist after the stories with Genesco's statements appeared. Thus, we cannot say as a matter of law that Cockram cannot show actual reputational harm. [4] Genesco relies on Kenney v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc . in arguing that even if Cockram can demonstrate that she incurred reputational harm, she cannot differentiate between harm from Genesco's statements and any harm from the news reports that did not include Genesco's statements. In Kenney, the plaintiff initially had prevailed at trial on her claim that a poster was defamatory during a portion of the time that it was displayed. 100 S.W.3d at 811. The defendant appealed, and the court noted that it appeared that the plaintiff failed to distinguish the harm from the poster at issue from the harm resulting from a television broadcast, ninety-nine identical posters, and the poster at issue when it was displayed at a time that the information was accurate. Id. at 818. However, the court also noted that the plaintiff felt that the injury to her reputation from the poster was `equally painful and devastating' to that of the television broadcast' and believed `they [were] the same kind of injury.' Id. at 812 (alteration in original). The court then observed that a prior decision denied recovery because the plaintiff `could not differentiate between the damages, if any, attributable to the defendant and the damages attributable to [a third person].' Id. at 818 (quoting Taylor v. Chapman, 927 S.W.2d 542, 544 (Mo.Ct. App.1996)). Ultimately, however, the Kenney court remanded for a new trial, rather than reversing, stating that although Kenney may face substantial obstacles in meeting her burden of proof on retrial, it could not say that it is impossible for her to present a submissible case. [5] Id. Cockram is in a better position to delineate the source of her reputational harm than was the plaintiff in Kenney. For example, comments to online news stories containing portions of Genesco's first statement provide evidence that some readers viewed Cockram as a racist after reading Genesco's statement. Additionally, in contrast to the plaintiff in Kenney, Cockram did not suggest that Genesco's statements placing blame on her inflicted the same kind of injury as the generic news stories covering the incident. Indeed, a news story that includes Genesco's statement placing blame on Cockram is likely to cause a greater degree of harm to reputation than one simply providing general information about the incident. Finally, Cockram's receipt of personal threats and messages accusing her of racism after Genesco released its statements (where Genesco points to no instances in the record of Cockram receiving such personal messages before Genesco's first statement despite three prior days of news coverage) also supports her causation argument. Under these circumstances, a reasonable jury could conclude that at least some of the reputational harm Cockram suffered resulted from Genesco's statements blaming her for using the racial slur as opposed to news stories that did not mention Genesco's statements. See Topper, 306 S.W.3d at 129-30 (determining that a jury may well have inferred that false statistics played a role in the removal of the plaintiff from his position when the statistics were published prior to his termination and made his management look very bad, even though other negative statements were made about the plaintiff that could have contributed to the loss of his job). Accordingly, we cannot say that a properly instructed jury will be unable to address reasonably the question of causation. See Kenney, 100 S.W.3d at 818 (stating, where there is evidence that some harm may have been caused by a non-actionable statement, that a jury should be instructed to attribute liability to a defendant only for loss allocable to an actionable statement). Therefore, we decline to affirm on this ground. In sum, Cockram is a private figure and a reasonable jury could conclude that Genesco's statements were false, that they harmed Cockram's reputation, and that this harm was distinguishable from any harm flowing from the generic news stories. Hence, the district court erred by granting summary judgment to Genesco on Cockram's defamation claim.