Dating gossip local people

Spreading rumors about coworkers is inadvisable, generally -- for one thing, your coworkers won't like or trust you. Worse, at a certain point, a negative rumor about a coworker can get you sued. In civil law, there are four characteristics of negative statements. If a statement has all four, it becomes defamation of character.

Most workplace rumors are relatively harmless: someone getting a promotion; pay increases, possible workforce reductions, new products or product discontinuations and any number of other issues of interest to company employees. Some rumors, however, are not harmless and can have serious consequences. Many of these center around one of two kinds of defamation of character:

• slander

  –

  which is any spoken statement that harms someone's character or reputation, and
  * libel

  –

  which is any written statement that causes similar harm.

An essential element of defamation of character is that the statements spoken or written are not only harmful, but untrue. If, for example, one worker says about another that she is stealing inventory, the statement is generally defamatory only if the worker hasn't stolen inventory.

For a written or oral statement to be defamatory, in addition to being untrue, the statement must also be:

• published
• injurious
• unprivileged

Under civil law, published simply means that someone other than the speaker and the person being spoken about hears the statement. In a sense, this is like the adage about a tree falling in the forest not making a sound if no one hears it. If the speaker, for instance, tells another worker "I think you're stealing inventory" when the workers are alone, the comment may be insulting but, lacking a witness, it isn't defamatory.

In the context of defamation_, injurious_ means that the statement must do actual harm to the plaintiff's reputation. If, for example, the speaker says, "Alice has just terrible taste in clothes," the statement would likely not be considered defamatory because one can be considered a person of good reputation even if their fashion sense leaves something to be desired.; if the person being spoken about were a clothing designer, however, the statement might come closer to being actionable, particularly if the person being spoken to were someone who could help or hinder Alice's professional progress.

The fourth pillar of defamation is that the statement must be unprivileged. What does this mean? If you're giving testimony before court of law, anything you say is privileged, meaning exempt from a charge of defamation. Even if what you say is untrue, you're still exempt, although you could be charged with perjury if you knew the statement was false when you testified.

Note that for a statement to be defamatory, all four pillars of defamation must stand. Even if a statement were published, injurious and unprivileged, under established law it wouldn't be considered defamatory if it were true.

Recently, however, a judicial ruling may have weakened that protection.

In 2009, the 1st Circuit found that "under Massachusetts law, even a true statement can form the basis of a libel action if the plaintiff proves that the defendant acted with 'actual malice'" which the court further defined as "actual malevolent intent or ill will."

This is a big difference in heretofore established law. As of 2018, this exception generally applies only to defamation suits tried in the 1st Circuit (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico and Rhode Island) .Eventually the 1st Circuit exception may be generally validated or invalidated by the Supreme Court, but as of early 2018, Americans have reason to be more than ordinarily cautious about workplace statements that, it could be argued, harm someone's reputation or character especially if there's reason for the plaintiff to argue that you made the statement with malevolent intent or ill will.

There are several reasons for avoiding speaking or writing critically about a coworker beyond your possible exposure to a defamation suit. One very good reason is that workers who get a reputation for mean behavior may find that they are the person whose professional advancement they've harmed most, especially if the person they've criticized can successfully argue to Human Resources or someone higher up in the organization that the negative behavior is harmful to the organization generally. And, according to at least one study of negative workers, they probably have a valid point.

Workers exposed to negativity affect coworkers negatively, who then become negative themselves, with significant harm to morale and performance. Negativity is contagious.

I am a retired Registered Investment Advisor with 12 years experience as head of an investment management firm. I also have a Ph.D. in English and have written more than 4,000 articles for regional and national publications.