Nicholas Carroll — Defamation of Character

I provide litigation consulting and expert witness testimony in both reputation harm and  defamation of character cases, including both libel and slander (or portrayal in a false My familiarity comes from 19 years of regular contact with defamation law and cases, tracking and analyzing the spread of defamation and economic damages, working with law firms to frame defamation cases or defenses, and hundreds of consultations with victims of defamation, most of them readers of my book Fighting Slander, published in 2003 and now in 5th Edition.

Particular areas of expertise:

• Online defamation and defamation repair, whether through blogs or social media. I worked for the founders of the internet, have been using social media since the early 1980s on bulletin boards and Usenet and “virtual communities,” since before the WWW burst on the scene in the 1990s, and the newer and broader venues such as Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram or Twitter since then, as well as “ratings” sites such as Yelp!. These venues may or may not harm either individual or business defamation victims, depending on the nature of the defamation, whether it is national or local, and whether it “goes viral.”

• Mainstream media libel. I've been an editor for 27 years, and understand the aspects: proper editorial procedure, “balance” (and the limitations of quote marks), fault, hot-button words, the limits of satire, “newswire” defenses, etc. Though social media libel gets the main share of attention, mainstream fault (a.k.a. “malice”) can be far more damaging.

• Economic damages analysis and opinion. Economic damages analysis and opinion. After 15 years of directly counseling defamed businesses and individuals victims on non-legal reputation repair solutions, I can help put numbers to the costs of real-life solutions, including actual and presumed damages. For either businesses or individuals I analyze and calculate financial harms and present my findings in hard numbers and clear infographics, with established causation.

• Emotional distress and why it is a reason to be awarded monetary damages (or when the claims are spurious). Since Fighting Slander was first published, I have spoken to hundreds of victims of slander and libel, and can clearly describe to a jury the terrific stress and anxiety that defamation causes victims, up to the point of making them unable to work, which then moves into economic damages.

• Supporting attorneys in identifying the elements of a defamation case and putting the case or the defense together, sometimes finding little-known claims or defenses in the evidence or case file; this includes structuring complaints or defenses, most effective points (e.g., “potential viewers” vs. “likes” or comments), and semantic analysis of hot-button words based on context – whether in niche businesses/groups or immigrant subcultures.

Conflicts:
Few. I am a completely independent EW, and I am not inherently a “plaintiff's expert witness” or a “defendant's expert witness” – I render facts and/or opinion based on the facts of the case.

Nicholas Carroll

Partial list of points I am familiar with: economic damages / financial harms (business losses, salary loss, and financial harm to career), emotional distress/mental anguish, malice (fault), public figures, public officials, right to privacy, truth or falsity, privilege (absolute or partial), satire, opinion vs. fact, painting or portraying in a false light, and innocent or intentional dissemination.