Victims of defamation get more time to sue, Ohio Supreme Court says

A tale of fraudulent emails, local real estate deals and false allegations of kickbacks wound its way from Warren County to the Ohio Supreme Court, which decided to give victims of defamation more time to file lawsuits.

Ohio's statute of limitations on slander and libel cases typically runs out after one year. But the 5-2 decision issued Thursday said that the one-year clock doesn't start running until the victim discovers their reputation has been harmed.

The ruling stems from a fraudulent email sent in 2011 by a real estate developer that alleged that Sycamore Township Trustee Thomas Weidman was demanding bribes. The real estate developer, Christopher Hildebrandt, showed the email in 2019 to other township officials to say Weidman opposed a second land deal because Hildebrandt had refused to pay kickbacks to him in 2011.

That triggered an investigation by the state auditor, which was later dropped due to a "lack of witness cooperation" and an inability to get bank records dating back 10 years.

Weidman didn't know about the fake email until November 2020 and didn't get a copy until January 2021. Weidman filed a defamation lawsuit against Hildebrandt in February 2021 in Warren County Common Pleas Court.

The trial court said Weidman missed his chance to sue but an appeals court disagreed. The Ohio Supreme Court upheld the 12th District Court of Appeals' decision.

Wrongdoers shouldn't be able to publish a defamatory statement and keep it a secret for at least a year, then release it publicly after a year and hide behind the one-year statute of limitations, according to the majority opinion authored by Justice Michael Donnelly, a Democrat.

Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy dissented, noting that Ohio's one-year statute of limitations for slander and libel cases has stood since 1853. The Republican justice said that through "judicial activism," the majority opinion was improperly applying a discovery rule.

Laura Bischoff is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.

lbischoff@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Victims of defamation get more time to sue, Ohio Supreme Court says