Bad Reputation Precludes Defamation Claim
It is not every day that a court throws out a defamation claim because the plaintiff’s reputation is “so badly tarnished that he cannot be further injured by the allegedly false statements on that subject.” But that is what happened by a New York state court in response to a lawsuit filed by retired baseball player Len Dykstra against another former ball player, Ron Darling Jr.
In the lawsuit, found here, Dykstra alleged that Darling’s 2019 book defamed by labeling him a racist and attacking his abilities as an athlete, him as a person, and hindered his ability to earn a living going forward. Darling's book pulled no punches, and explicitly labeled Dykstra a thug and claimed that he taunted an opposing pitcher with racist and hateful insults. For most people, if those claims were untrue and the statements met the constitutionally mandated level of culpability for defamation claims, the lawsuit would proceed. Darling, however, argued that Dykstra's reputation was already so bad that anything he said, even if it were defamatory, could not worsen Dykstra's reputation.
In response to Darling's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, the court delved into the libel-proof plaintiff doctrine. That line of cases bars relief in the “rare circumstances” when, as a matter of law, the plaintiff’s reputation is so bad that the defamatory statement could not worsen it. The court’s opinion is quite a read; however, the following passage sums it up:
The nature and seriousness of Dykstra’s criminal offenses, which include fraud, embezzlement, grand theft, and lewd conduct and assault with a deadly weapon, and notably the degree of publicity they received, have already established his general bad reputation for fairness and decency far worse than the alleged racially charged bench-jockeying in the reference could. []
Given the aforesaid litany of stories concerning Dykstra’s poor and mean-spirited behavior particularly toward various groups including racial minorities, women, and the LGBTQ community—this Court finds that, as a matter of law, the reference cannot “induce an evil opinion of [Dykstra] in the minds of right-thinking persons” or “deprive him of their friendly intercourse in society,” as that “evil opinion” has long existed. []