Legal Updates

Statements in employment relations will receive protection from defamation more easily than other statements

April 19, 2020
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An employee of a technology company sent an e-mail to the CEO to which the company's accountant and insurance agent were also addressees. In her letter, the employee called the CEO names because she was not paid rights to which she was entitled.
The Labor Court held that this was a defamation, but the employee would be afforded protection under law. Offensive statement against a person will be deemed defamation if published to another person. Here, the employee sent the email to other people besides the CEO and therefore this constitutes defamation. However, statements made under employment relations will be reviewed from a lenient perspective and given broader protection than statements of the same nature, which were made under different circumstances. Here, the employee believed the statement she wrote and the text of the publication did not go beyond the scope of reasonableness as the email was not widely sent, did not appeal to a wide audience of readers and did not exceed the proportion reasonable under the circumstances of the case and therefore the claim against the employee was rejected.