Court Opinion

ID: 9730943
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:28:56.352678+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:11.375787
License: Public Domain

Michael J. Kelly, J.
(concurring). I concur in the result reached by Judge Corrigan, mainly because plaintiffs have been given the opportunity to amend their pleadings. In my opinion, leave to appeal was improvidently granted because the trial court had not decided if this was a "false light” defamation case, and, if so, whether Michigan law recognizes such a cause of action. The Restatement of Torts, 3 Restatement Torts, 2d, § 565, provides for such a cause of action. Section 565 provides that a defamatory communication may consist of a statement of fact. Comment b to § 565 provides:
b. Direct and indirect statements of fact. To be defamatory under the rule stated in this Section, it is not necessary that-the accusation or other statement be by words. It is enough that the communication is reasonably capable of being understood as charging something defamatory. Thus another may be defamed by a statement that he associates with, persons of notoriously disreputable character or by attributing to him the characteristics of literary or historical figures of ill repute.
Illustration:
1. A without the consent of b, an amateur golfer, publishes b’s picture in an advertisement that represents b in the act of eating a chocolate bar manufactured by a’s company. A number of persons understand from this advertisement that b has forfeited his amateur standing as a golfer by receiving compensation for the publication of his photograph. The communication is defamatory.
*59Plaintiffs certainly have alleged damages as a result of the four broadcasts. I do not think there is any dispute about that. When the case was argued, it seemed to me that plaintiffs were relying on a cause of action urging that defendants’ broadcasts had manipulated the truth in such a way as to cast them in the false light of perpetrating unprofessional and unworkmanlike construction practices, whereas, in truth and fact, plaintiffs were "shell” builders, and sold to purchasers, including the Lahos, who were finishers of their own homes. The trial court had not viewed the videotapes of the programs and expressly left open to defendants the opportunity to reapply for summary disposition upon the furnishing of such videotapes to the court. Perhaps this will be done on remand, and when the case finds its way back here, the false light defamation question may be ripe for decision in this Court and the Supreme Court.