Comments on Recent Cases: August 2026
Image credit: DHSgov, OGC Bring Your Kid to Work Day (55492190736), August 6, 2026. Photo by Tia Dufour. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Part of my work involves reading court decisions to keep abreast of how judges decide the types of cases I handle. Below, I share some thoughts on recent decisions.
Dismissal of Defamation Claim Against Newman Litigation Client
I’m pleased to share that the Appellate Division sided with my client in an appeal in a recent decision. The case before the state appeals court in Brooklyn concerned whether a statement on Instagram was the kind of public statement that qualified for the Anti-SLAPP statute requirement for defamation plaintiffs to submit evidence to survive a motion to dismiss.
In this case, the plaintiff tried to submit evidence after the motion to dismiss. The court held, among other things, that it was too late to submit evidence in support of his claim and refused to disturb dismissal of the case. The appellate court affirmed, noting that the plaintiff did not offer a sufficient justification for why he submitted evidence late. The reason that the court rejected was that the plaintiff said he did not know about software that he could use to download text messages at the time of the motion to dismiss.
Cases like this illustrate the difficulty in reversing motions for reargument or reconsideration.
Reputational Injury Is Sufficient to Confer Standing
A threshold question in any lawsuit is whether the plaintiff suffered an injury such that she is the right person to bring a claim. If a defendant is causing harm, even if it is widespread, not just anyone can sue to address the problem. It has to be someone with “standing.” One way to establish standing is to allege that the defendant’s actions caused the plaintiff to suffer reputational harm.
For example, in a recent case before the federal district court in Manhattan, the discussion platform Reddit sued AI companies like Perplexity for, among other things, stealing data that Reddit users posted. The AI companies alleged that Reddit did not own the data, and so any theft of the data did not harm Reddit, which meant it didn’t have standing. The court held that the reputational harm to Reddit was sufficient to give it standing since Reddit relies on its reputation to get people to contribute.
Decisions like this illustrate how courts consider challenges to standing.
Dismissal of Claim for Failure to Plead Facts Even When Video Evidence Could Have Upheld the Claim
Plaintiffs must allege specific facts in their complaint to support their claims. It is not enough to say that the defendant harmed the plaintiff; the plaintiff has to lay out how the defendant caused the harm.
For example, in a recent case before the state appeals court in Manhattan, a landowner sued a lawyer for filing a fraudulent trip-and-fall lawsuit. The trial court dismissed the claim because the landowner’s brief did not specify facts that satisfied the high standard for “egregious” conduct by the opposing counsel. The appeals court affirmed, but one judge dissented, noting the lawyer should have known about the video evidence that the plaintiff in the fraudulent lawsuit faked his injury. The dissent acknowledged, however, that the landowner’s complaint did not show that the lawyer knew about this video before filing the complaint.
Cases like this illustrate the need to allege specific facts. But lawyers cannot just dump a million irrelevant facts into a complaint and hope that works. Careful lawyers focus only on the important facts.