As a Florida business owner, you want your business to be a huge success. Unfortunately, things can hinder your achievements. If a competing business or a disgruntled customer or former employee makes disparaging comments about your company, it can be damaging. You may want to know if you can sue for defamation in this scenario.
What kind of statements can harm the reputation of a business?
Per business law, in order to sue for defamation, there must be a published statement that harms the reputation of your business. Often, the statement may be from a competitor that wants to halt the success of a business or insult its staff. However, it’s only possible to sue for defamation if the statement causes harm and is false. Simply being insulting is not enough.
The statement must be objectively provable as false
Business law requires a statement to be objectively provable as false in order to sue for defamation. In other words, if the statement is outrageous and false to the point where it’s possible to prove that it’s false, there are grounds for a lawsuit. For example, if a disgruntled former employee makes a statement online that the business cheats on its taxes when the business actually pays its share of taxes each year, this can be proven as false.
The importance of finding the person who made the statement
If the person who made the defamatory statement can be found, they might face serious repercussions. While it’s always possible that they used a fake name to conceal their identity, it might be possible to track them down through their IP address by going through the website to provide such information and more. However, this can be tricky, expensive and time-consuming.
Defamation against a business is a business tort. It’s in a business owner’s best interests to protect their company’s reputation from inflammatory defamation.
