Case Brief

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Justin R. Blount

August 20, 2020

Case Brief

Yeagle v. Collegiate Times., 255 Va. 293 (1998)

Procedural Background:

Yeagle sued the Collegiate Times in the Circuit Court, Montgomery County, for common law defamation, defamation per se, and use of insulting words. The trial court dismissed all of Yeagle’s claims, holding that the statement at issue was “void of any literal meaning” and thus could not sustain her claims. Yeagle appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court.

Facts

Yeagle is the assistant to the Vice President of Student Affairs at Virginia Tech. As a part of her job she helped to oversee participation in the 1996 Governor’s Fellows Program. The Collegiate Times, Virginia Tech’s student newspaper, wrote an article about this program that quoted Yeagle. The article as a whole was complimentary of the program and said nothing negative about Yeagle. However, beneath the quote Yeagle’s name appeared with the phrase “Director of Butt Licking.”

Issue

Is the phrase “Director of Butt Licking” as used in this context incapable of being defamatory because it carries no factual meaning?

Rule

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution places limits on defamation claims such that “speech which does not contain a provably false connotation, or statements which cannot reasonably be interpreted as stating actual facts about a person, cannot form the basis of a common law defamation action.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that “insulting, offensive, or otherwise inappropriate language” cannot serve as a basis for a claim of defamation if “no reasonable inference could be drawn that the individual identified in the statements, as a matter of fact, engaged in the conduct described.”

When determining the meaning of words “inferences cannot extend the statements, by innuendo, beyond what would be the ordinary and common acceptance of the statement.”

Application

Yeagle advances two arguments for why the statement “Director of Butt Licking” is factual and defamatory. First, she asserts the phrase accuses her of a violation of the Virginia sodomy statute by alleging that she actually licks butts. Second, she asserts that the phrase implies that she does not perform her job with integrity, but rather tries to curry favor with superiors through “disingenuous behavior.”

The court rules that both of these arguments fail because of the context in which the phrase was made. The law requires that for a statement to be defamatory, it must carry some factual connotation that can be proven false. Additionally, the law requires that to make this determination, the words must be interpreted in their context in the way a normal, reasonable person would. In this case, the Collegiate Times’ article never mentions any sexual act whatsoever, and thus no reasonable reader would interpret the phrase “Director of Butt Licking” as accusing Yeagle of literally licking butts. With respect to the second argument, the article never accuses Yeagle of doing a poor job. Rather, the article is complimentary of the program she administered. Thus, no reasonable reader would interpret the phrase as accusing Yeagle of currying favor as she asserts.

The court states that in the context of this article, the statement “Director of Butt Licking” was nothing more than an offensive statement that was made in bad taste. No reasonable reader would interpret the statement as conveying any actual factual meaning about Yeagle, and thus the statements made about her are protected by the First Amendment and cannot serve as the basis for her defamation claim.

Conclusion

The court affirms the judgment of the trial court, holding that the statement at issue conveyed no factual information about Yeagle and thus could not serve as the basis for a defamation action.