We get calls all of the time for people looking to sue for defamation or slander. Most of those cases go nowhere for a variety of reasons. These include:
- They waited too long. The time limit for suing in Illinois is one year from when the defamatory statement was spoken or written.
- Lack of harm. If you can’t prove actual financial damages, your case won’t have enough value. If it’s just your family members or some people on Facebook, the case likely isn’t worth much. It doesn’t make it right, it just means you’d likely have to pay your lawyer up front to bring the suit.
- A bad defendant. If you were defamed, but it’s by someone who has no money, even if you win, the chances of collecting anything are low. So if you are suing a teenager or poor person, it’s probably a waste of time. Also, you can’t stop a crazy person from being crazy via a lawsuit.
- Truth or opinion. This is the #1 defense to these lawsuits. You can’t sue someone for telling the truth, even if it’s embarrassing. And you can’t sue someone for expressing a bad opinion about you. In other words, they can say you were terrible at your job. That’s their opinion.
For these reasons and more, it’s very rare to hear about a successful defamation lawsuit in Illinois. The best ones I remember have involved public figures or situations where a newspaper or TV channel has done something egregious.
But recently there was an Illinois defamation trial that was the exception to all of this. A worker at Wells Fargo called the clients of another broker and falsely told them that he had defrauded investors in the past and committed fraud upon his clients. This was a lie.
In doing so, he did this as an agent of Wells Fargo which meant they could be sued too. There doesn’t appear to be any defense to the claims as a jury found for the plaintiff and awarded over $27 million in damages plus attorney fees which will bring the total verdict to around $28.5 million.
This lawsuit was filed in time, harm was proven by lost clients and reputation damage, the defendant is great because it’s a big company and nothing said was remotely factual or an opinion.
This is a legal unicorn. Something like this almost never happens.
By the way, the case took five years to get to trial. That involved a lot of legal work. It’s why attorneys won’t take cases without big damages. These cases take time and if they aren’t going to get a big judgment in the end, it wouldn’t be worth it to spend hundreds of hours on the case. Unless you pay them out of pocket which would cost you thousands, win or lose.