A California state appeals judge ruled that a man forwarding an e-mail about a Vietnam War veteran could not be charged with defamation. -db
March 1, 2010
By Avery Fellow
“If you are defamed in an email, and the person who receives the email then simply forwards it on to a friend, your recourse is against the originator of the first email, not the person who hit the forward icon,” Justice David Sills wrote for the Fourth District Court of Appeal in San Diego.
Fellow veteran Lang Van Pham got the email and passed it on to at least one other veteran, adding an introductory paragraph that read: “Everything will come out into the daylight.”
Pham did not contribute to the alleged defamation by prefacing the email with his thoughts, the appeals court ruled.
“Nothing ‘created’ by defendant Pham was itself defamatory,” Justice Sills wrote. “All he said was: The truth will come out in the end. What will be will be. Whatever.”
Copyright 2010 Courthouse News Service