In January 2020, Plaintiff Salve Chipola attended a Clearview Regional High School’s basketball game, at which time he encountered an acquaintance, Defendant Sean Flannery speaking with a member of the school staff. When attending a subsequent game at the school, a police officer prevented him from entering and handed him a letter from the school, informing him that he was banned from school grounds because of the belief that he was a drug dealer and was selling drugs to or purchasing alcohol for students. He later learned that Defendant Flannery had made statements to the school official, alleging that Plaintiff was a drug dealer and had provided drugs and alcohol to the students. Chipola sued Flannery, claiming that his alleged statements constituted a “false light invasion of privacy.” The issue in Chipola v. Flannery, 2025 N.J. LEXIS 752 (Aug. 7, 2025) was what statute of limitations applied to this claim – one year or two years?
Chipola did not sue Flannery for false light invasion of privacy until about two years after the alleged incident. In the lawsuit, he claimed that Flannery made false statements about him, creating a false impression of him as a drug dealer, harming his reputation and causing him emotional distress. He further alleged that Flannery made these statements knowing they were false or in reckless disregard of the comments’ falsity and, as a result, his “reputation as a drug dealer was publicized throughout Gloucester County.”
Defendant Flannery filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that Chipola had filed his complaint outside the applicable one-year statute of limitations for defamation, which he argued applied to a false light invasion of privacy claim. The limitations period began to run on the date of the alleged comments, January 9, 2020. The trial court granted the motion to dismiss, agreeing with the plaintiff’s argument that the one-year statute of limitations applied to this type of claim and barred the claims in the lawsuit.
Chipola appealed this decision to the Appellate Division which affirmed the dismissal of the lawsuit in an unpublished opinion. Thereafter, the matter was further appealed to the New Jersey Supreme Court.
Plaintiff argued that the two-year personal injury statute of limitations should apply, rather than the one-year statute of limitations governing defamation claims. On the other hand, Defendant argued that false light claims were essentially the same in nature as one of defamation and, therefore, should be governed by the defamation’s one-year statute of limitations.
The Supreme Court agreed with the trial court and Appellate Division decisions that a one-year statute of limitations should be applied to a false light claim. It noted that “the conduct at the heart of both defamation and false light invasion of privacy claims is essentially the same; in holding otherwise would cause false light to engulf the tort of defamation and eradicate the narrowed one-year limitations that is intended to balance potentially tortious behavior with free speech rights.” It noted the overlap between the causes of action for false light and defamation, in conjunction with the practical considerations and free speech protections. Further, the Court noted that a significant number of other jurisdictions throughout the country had applied the same statute of limitations to false light and defamation claims.
Hence, the Supreme Court ruled that false light claims would be subject to the same one-year statute of limitations as defamation claims. Therefore, the lower courts’ decisions were affirmed, dismissing the lawsuit due to the failure to file the claim within the statute of limitations.
