“A jury ruled Friday that a labor union defamed Sutter Health with a mass mailing of postcards and awarded the Northern California health care organization almost $17.3 million in damages. The Placer County jury found that Unite Here, one of the nation’s largest unions that represents hotel, restaurant and laundry workers, defamed Sutter Health early last year by sending postcards to women of child-bearing age in Northern California claiming the organization’s hospitals used unclean linens. The union was in a labor dispute with the laundry service that cleaned the linens at the time.” (“Jury: Union defamed Sutter Health”, InsideBayArea.com (Hayward Daily Review), Jul. 23; Mehul Srivastava, “Jury award stings union”, Sacramento Bee, Jul. 22).
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I’m curious: Is the point of this post that the $17.3 million award was outrageous? Or that Northern California health care filed a frivolous lawsuit against Unite Here?
I applaud Sutter’s litigation, and I hope this verdit is upheld on appeal. Unions get too much federal protection anyway; civil suits might be a good way to level the playing field.
Well, as is not uncommon, there’s more than one possible view to be taken of the case. One reader who sent in the story took the view that it’s only fair for a union to face the same kind of tort-liability risk that a business would face under similar circumstances — such exposure might even broaden the constituency for litigation reform. My main reaction, however, was disquiet that a group’s engagement in controversial speech — what one of its supporters called “propaganda” — has just landed it in a potentially ruinous $17 million verdict. The threat of such liability can chill a lot of speech, including speech that is not as rancorous and unfair as the union’s speech appears to have been in this instance.
“controversial” is not necessarily “defaming”.
Someone claiming that humans were put on this planet by aliens = “controversial” (and stupid)
Someone claiming that I don’t do the service I charge people for = “defamation”
There’s a fairly large difference. Much as I hate the legal system as it currently exists, not all lawsuits or large verdicts are automatically unjust.
If the union really did put out a mass mailing of any significant size that really did claim that Sutter Health used unclean linens and Sutter Health really doesn’t use unclean linens, then that’s fairly serious defamation. It would also be libel.