An adviser to the mayor of Haifa made an offensive statement at a journalist during a city council meeting.
The Court accepted the claim and ordered both the consultant and the municipality to compensate the journalist for defamation. Defamation is, Inter alia, a written or oral statement which purpose is to humiliate, degrade and ridicule a person in front of others due to a characteristic or actions attributed to it. An employer is liable for a tortious act committed by its employee, if the employee committed the act in the course of work, including when publishing defamation. The journalist's entrance to the city council meeting was blocked and insults were hurled at her with statements attributing her drug consumption. Portraying a journalist as a person who uses drugs is something that has the potential to insult, humiliate, make her a target for ridicule and harm her job as a journalist. Given the fact that the statement was said in the presence of other people, it constitutes defamatory publication. Because the defamatory statement were said by the mayor consultant during its duties as the mayor's assistant and in order to protect the mayor, the municipality was also held accountable and they both were to pay compensation to the journalist.