Winning a defamation case in the United States as a private person is thankfully and notably difficult. Winning a defamation case as a public person (someone well known in the relevant community or a public official) is extremely difficult unless there is an unmitigated lie, and nearly impossible if the case comes down to one person’s word against another’s.
Often defamation actions are covers — one person who may have done something wrong will protest his or her innocence, sue and accuser and use the pressure of a lawsuit to obtain a retraction of some sort. Those lawsuits are discouraged in California by the SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) statute, which penalizes plaintiffs for using defamation actions as swords to prevent defendants from exercising First Amendment rights.
The Monk won’t hazard a guess here about the merits of this lawsuit that former US track superstar Marion Jones filed against Vincent Conte, the founder of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative. That company is better known as BALCO, [alleged] steroid supplier to the superstars. Conte stated in interviews and in ESPN The Magazine that he personally witnessed Marion Jones inject steroids into herself and that he cut ties to her because she kept losing steroid paraphenalia on the road.
Jones has passed a lie detector test and testified to her innocence under oath before various athletic committees and in affidavits. But her ex-husband was thrown out of the 2000 Olympics for steroid use and her boyfriend is reputedly similarly dirty. On the other hand, Conte has never subjected his statements to the penalty of perjury.
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