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Brian McNamee's Defamation Lawsuit Involves Steroids
Author: Scarinci Hollenbeck, LLC
Date: May 7, 2014
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Steroids in baseball has been a major topic of conversation for quite some time.
Former New York Yankee and Boston Red Sox pitcher, Roger Clemens, was one of the most recent targets, as his trainer, Brian McNamee, said he provided Clemens with performance-enhancing drugs.
PEDs have led to numerous legal battles, but one of the cases still going on has nothing to do with the legality of steroids in baseball. After being accused by McNamee, Clemens attempted to discredit him as a source of this information which McNamee claims led to defamation. It appears as though this case could be headed to trial soon.
McNamee has to prove the following four elements in order to get a ruling in his favor for defamation:
1. The defamatory statement must be published. This means it can be spoken, written, pictured or gestured. Written statements are often considered more serious by courts, as these last longer than the spoken word.
2. In addition to being published, the statement must also be false. Someone can speak something that is mean or disparaging, but if it is true it isn’t defamatory. Generally, opinions don’t count as defamation because it is difficult to prove if such statements are objectively false. For example, Clemens calling McNamee the worst trainer of all time isn’t a defamatory statement.
3. The third element that must be proven is that the statement was “injurious.” Defamation lawsuits are filed to repair a reputation, which means a statement needs to actually hurt someone’s image.
4. The final element is that the statement is “unprivileged.” This means that people who testify in court falsely can not be sued for defamation. Privileged statements are those when free speech is important enough that people should not have to worry about being sued for defamation.
The Clemens vs. McNamee legal battle has been going on for quite some time. It will be interesting to see if it ends up going to trial – and if McNamee wins – as defamation is not any easy thing to prove, shown by the four aforementioned elements.
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