Tag: Rule 224

Truth Is Defense to Employee Intentional Interference With Contract Suit – IL Court

 

 

The Illinois First District recently discussed the contours of pre-suit discovery requests in cases that implicate fee speech concerns and whether truthful information can ever support an intentional interference with employment claim.

After relocating from another state to take a compliance role with a large bank, the plaintiff in Calabro v. Northern Trust Corporation, 2017 IL App (1st) 163079-U, was fired after only two weeks on the job for failing to disclose his forced removal from a prior compliance position.

When the employer wouldn’t spill the tea on the snitch’s identity, plaintiff sued.  The trial court dismissed plaintiff’s pre-suit discovery petition and plaintiff appealed.

Affirming, the Court construed pre-suit discovery requests under Supreme Court Rule 224 narrowly.  That rule allows a petitioner to discover the identity of someone who may be responsible in damages to petitioner.

To initiate a request for discovery under Rule 224, the petitioner files a verified petition that names as defendant the person(s) from whom discovery is sought and states why discovery (along with a description of the discovery sought) is necessary.  An order granting a Rule 224 petition is limited to allowing the plaintiff to learn the identity of the responsible party or to at least depose him/her.

To show that discovery is necessary, the petitioner must present sufficient allegations of actionable harm to survive a Section 2-615 motion to dismiss.  That is, the petition must state sufficient facts to state a recognized cause of action.

But Rule 224 limits discovery to the identity of someone who may be responsible to the petitioner.  A petitioner cannot use Rule 224 to engage in a “vague and speculative quest to determine whether a cause of action actually exists.”

Here, the petitioner didn’t know what was actually said by the third party respondent. The Court viewed this as a tacit admission the plaintiff didn’t know if he had a valid claim.

The Court then focused on the veracity of the third-party’s statement.  To be actionable, an intentional interference claim requires the supply of false data about a plaintiff.  Accurate and truthful information, no matter how harmful, cannot underlie an intentional interference action. This is because allowing someone to sue on truthful information violates the First Amendment (to the Constitution) and chills free speech.

Truthful statement immunity is also supported by Section 772 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts which immunizes truthful information from contract interference liability.  [(¶¶ 18-19].  And since the plaintiff’s claim was based on true information – that plaintiff was fired from his last job – the prospective interference claim was doomed to fail.

Afterwords:

This case portrays an interesting application of Rule 224 – a device often employed in the personal injury context.  While the rule provides a valuable tool for plaintiffs trying to identify possible defendants, it doesn’t allow a freewheeling “fishing expedition,”  The petitioner must still state a colorable claim.  In this case, the Court viewed the potential for stifling free speech more worrisome than the individual plaintiff’s private contract rights.

 

 

Suit to Unmask Nasty Yelp! Reviewer Nixed by IL Court On First Amendment Grounds

With social media use apparently proliferating at breakneck speed, Brompton Building v. Yelp! Inc. (2013 IL App (1st) 120547-U)) is naturally post-worthy for its examination of whether hostile on-line reviews are actionable by the business recipients of the negative reviews.

A former tenant, “Diana Z.”, spewed some invective about an apartment management company where she questioned the management company’s business competence, integrity and people skills; especially as they related to billing and handling tenant rent payments.

The building owner (not the management company; by this time there was new management) sued Yelp!, the online review site, to unearth the reviewer’s identity through a Rule 224 petition for discovery so that it could later sue the reviewer for defamation and tortious interference with prospective economic advantage.  The court found the on-line review consisted of protected expressions of opinion and denied the petition for discovery. The plaintiff building owner appealed.

Result: Affirmed.

Rules/Reasoning:

Rule 224 allows a party to engage in discovery for the singular purpose of ascertaining the identity of one who may be responsible in damages.  The case law applying Rule 224 provides significant protection for anonymous individuals so that there private affairs aren’t intruded on.  The Rule’s mechanics: (1) the petition must be verified, (2) it must say why discovery is necessary, (3) it must be limited to determining the identity of someone who may be responsible in damages to the petitioner; and (4) there must be a court hearing to determine that the unidentified person is in fact possibly liable in damages to the petitioner.   ¶ 13.

The Rule 224 petition must set forth factual allegations sufficient to survive a Section 2-615 motion to dismiss (that is, does the proposed complaint state a cause of action?) in order to successfully seek pre-suit discovery.

In Illinois, defamation suits are defeated by the First Amendment to the US Constitution where the challenged statement isn’t factual (it’s an opinion, for instance) and the action is brought by (1) a public official, (2) a public figure, and (3) actions involving media defendants by private individuals.

There is no defamation for “loose, figurative language” that no person could reasonably believe states a fact. Whether something is sufficiently fact-based to underlie a defamation claim involves looking at (1) whether the statement has a readily understood and precise meaning, (2) whether the statement can be verified, and (3) whether its social or literary context signals that it is factual.  ¶ 20.

Illinois courts also espouse a policy of protecting site defendants like Yelp! from a potential torrent of lawsuits by recipients of negative postings.  In addition, the Federal Communications Decency Act (47 U.S.C. § 230) usually insulates a website like Yelp! from liability for publishing third party comments.

Here, the plaintiff failed to allege actionable defamation against Yelp!  While the court conceded that Diana Z.’s statement that the property manager was a liar and illegally charging tenants were factual on their face, when considered in context – the plaintiff couched her rant in hyperbolic speech – the statements were (protected) expressions of opinion. ¶¶ 29-30.

Since the plaintiff couldn’t make out an actual defamation claim against the anonymous Yelp! reviewer, its petition for discovery was properly denied.

Take-aways:

This is but one of many lawsuits involving vitriolic on-line criticism of businesses. In Illinois, the law is clear that to get a court to order a website operator to unveil an anonymous reviewer’s identity, the plaintiff must make a prima facie showing that the review is defamatory or had a tendency to cause third parties to dissociate from it and take their business elsewhere. Failing that, the court will deny a petition for discovery and the plaintiff will be left without a defendant or a remedy.