Remarks in personnel file of public employee do not constitute defamation.
Defamation claims take two forms – libel (written) and slander (spoken). Establishing a prima facie case of either requires the plaintiff to show that the defendant “published” the alleged defamatory statement. The question of what constitutes “publication” is one raised frequently in both Tennessee and other jurisdictions. Our Court of Appeals recently looked at this question in the context of remarks placed in the personnel file of a public employee. The plaintiff argued that the publication element was satisfied because her personnel file could be viewed by members of the general public under the Tennessee Public Records Act. The court disagreed.
Reaching back to a 1929 Tennessee Supreme Court opinion, the Court of Appeals noted that, in Tennessee, a “communication between officers and agents of a corporation...is not publication of libelous matter.” Accordingly, the Court held that communication of the circumstances surrounding the plaintiff’s termination to other employees in the hospital through the use of correspondence and notations in the plaintiff's personnel file did not satisfy the publication requirement for a defamation claim.
The Court further held that the plaintiff’s own publication of the allegedly defamatory statements could not satisfy the prima facie requirement.
The opinion, Anne McLeay v. Wava Huddleston, et al., is available here.