This matter arises from a claim of plaintiffs Christopher Maier and Land of Make Believe, an amusement and water park, against defendant James Zellers for spreading a false rumor about an alleged statement made by Maier. According to the complaint, in April of 2022, defendant “concocted a false and defamatory story” that Maier visited defendant at his pizzeria, warning him not to hire one of plaintiffs’ former employees who was autistic because the individual was “stupid.” In Maier v. Zellers, 2024 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 359 (App. Div. Mar. 6, 2024) the issue was whether plaintiffs could sue defendant Zellers for defamation based upon this alleged false accusation and the damage suffered by their business as a result of the publication of this statement.
Plaintiffs claimed that the accusation was untrue and that it was “created to detract attention from defendant paying his employees under the table at his pizzeria.” According to plaintiffs, this accusation created a “fire storm of bad publicity” for them and they suffered substantial financial damages as a result.
This statement was published on a local Facebook page by the sister of the employee to whom Maier was allegedly referring. She attributed the source of this comment to defendant.
At the trial court level, defendant asked the court to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim. The trial court found that the statements attributed to the defendant were only opinions and, therefore, the defendant could not be held liable. Plaintiffs’ motion for reconsideration of this decision was denied.
This appeal ensued. Plaintiffs argued that the trial court made a mistake in dismissing their defamation claim by incorrectly finding that defendant’s statement was an “opinion” – as opposed to a “statement.” Under New Jersey law, one would not be able to sue for damages if the statement made was only an “opinion” as opposed to a defamatory statement of fact.
The Appellate Division noted that a defamatory statement would be one that is “false and injurious to the reputation of another or exposes another person to hatred, contempt or ridicule or subjects another person to a loss of the goodwill and a confidence in which he or she is held by others.” To be able to sue for defamation, a plaintiff must show three elements:
- The assertion of a false and defamatory statement concerning another;
- The unprivileged publication of that statement to a third party;
- Fault amounting at least to negligence by the publisher.
The Court noted that there are two types of opinions. An opinion “is found when the maker of the statement states the facts on which they base their opinion of the plaintiff and then states a view as to the plaintiff’s conduct, qualifications or character.” A statement can also be considered an opinion when “both parties to the communication know the facts or assume their existence and the statement of opinion is obviously based on those assumed facts as justification for the opinion.” Or, there is another type of mixed type of expression of opinion in which “is apparently based on facts about the plaintiff or their conduct that have neither been stated by the defendant nor assumed to exist by the parties to the communication.”
Here, the Appellate Division did find that the plaintiffs pled a cause of action for defamation. The Court noted that, if proved, defendant’s alleged statement was not a statement of opinion. Rather, “[i]t was neither an expression of his view of facts nor an opinion about facts not stated or assumed by the parties.” The alleged statement was that defendant repeated what he believed to be facts “that Maier called an autistic person stupid.”
Plaintiffs contended that defendant made this false statement which harmed their reputations. They further allege that defendant published this statement to a third-party because he told the employee’s sister, who posted it on Facebook and then her post was then shared widely in the community. She identified defendant as the source of this defamatory statement.
Therefore, the Appellate Division found that plaintiffs’ complaint did state a cause of action for defamation against the defendant. The Court reversed the trial court’s dismissal of the complaint and remanded it back to the trial court for further proceedings.
