Jury Awards $100K to Woman Who Says Fictional Character Defamed Her
A Georgia jury has awarded $100,000 to a woman who says she was defamed because a character in the book The Red Hat Club had a mix of her own traits and other false characteristics that depicted her as a promiscuous alcoholic.
The Nov. 19 jury award for plaintiff Vickie Stewart was far less than the minimum of $1 million in damages sought by her lawyer, Jeffrey Horst, according to the Fulton County Daily Report.
Stewart had contended novelist Haywood Smith, a childhood friend, had created the character SuSu with looks that resembled hers, with the same job as a flight attendant, and with similar experiences involving a second, conniving husband. But Stewart says she did not have other traits of the character, including a propensity to engage in casual sex and drink at work.
The jury did not award attorney fees to Stewart, and did not rule for her on an invasion of privacy claim against Smith and her publisher, St. Martin’s Press. The defendants were represented by Peter Canfield of Dow Lohnes.
Canfield told the Fulton County Daily Report that the jury found for Stewart on the defamation charge because “they were essentially instructed that, in Georgia, modeling a fictional character after a real person is a strict liability offense.”
“Under that standard, as the jury was instructed on Georgia law, a whole host of authors that we all know and are highly esteemed would be considered serial tortfeasors,” he said. They include authors such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Irving, he said.
