Colantonio v. Mercy Med. Ctr. (Summary)

DEFAMATION

Colantonio v. Mercy Med. Ctr., 2014 N.Y. Slip Op. 02009 (N.Y. App. Div. Mar. 26, 2014)

A New York appeals court affirmed a previous order of a lower court denying a medical center’s motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s complaints of defamation.

The plaintiff, a physician, alleged that the defendants defamed him by making false statements to the National Practitioner Data Bank.  The appeals court ruled that the plaintiff’s allegations of malice are sufficient to state a cause of action for purposes of a motion to dismiss. Additionally, the court held that the defendants were not entitled to dismissal because no documentary evidence was presented to utterly refute the plaintiff’s allegations.

The defendants also argued that the one-year statute of limitations barred the plaintiff’s defamation claims against statements that appeared in a 2010 report. The defendants argued that these statements were originally published in 2009, and are therefore barred due to the single-publication rule. However, the appeals court affirmed the lower court’s decision not to apply the time-bar, as the subject statements differed in scope, detail, and description from the original publications.