Court Opinion

ID: 9658216
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 20:51:41.013263+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:52.972424
License: Public Domain

M. J. Kelly, J.
(concurring). The entire gravamen of plaintiff’s complaint is that defendant Martel accused plaintiff of treating his son "most unfairly” and of displaying "remarkable insensitivity and behavior that was most unprofessional”. This is an expression of plain everyday ordinary communication between human beings of every ilk and stripe. It is patently ridiculous that courts should be required to countenance claims of libel and intentional infliction of emotional distress from everyday ordinary communication of the sort belabored in these proceedings.
If anything, I think the lower court erred in according plaintiff more attention than her claims justified. This case should have been peremptorily dismissed on First Amendment grounds as containing free expressions of opinion. Had defendant written a letter to the editor or had defendant intentionally disseminated the latter in the community, would the result be any different? We question the competence of our professionals daily in every conceivable form of communication and it is our absolute right to do so publicly in matters of opinion, let alone in the course of quasi-judicial *640school district complaint procedures. This matter should have received the shortest shrift possible:
"However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas.” Gertz v Robert Welch, Inc, 418 US 323, 339-340; 94 S Ct 2997, 3007; 41 L Ed 2d 789, 805 (1974).