How a Single Letter Does the Trick?
If you’re running a business, experiencing slander or defamation from your competitors is unfortunately an all too common occurrence. Dealing with this can be a headache or even make you feel that there’s nobody you can turn to for help.
Now relax and let us share with you one of our little story about how our experienced litigation lawyers team helped cope with the defamatory articles with just one letter.
Yes, one letter, that’s all it takes.
Now we’re going to unfold the secrets behind our cease and desist letter that solved an issue hanging for nearly one year.
Last year is where the story begins. A few competitors of our client Mr. C’s company set up fake accounts on an online forum and posted defamatory articles with the malicious intent of sabotaging Mr. C. and shattering our client’s long-built reputation and business. Mr. C immediately fought back via a series of actions, including posting statements of clarification, making requests to the forum, and seeking help from a law firm.
Unfortunately, none of them worked.
Despite all the effort that Mr. C made and even with the assistance of a lawyer from the law firm he hired before he came to us, the defamatory articles still remained up on the forum. What’s more, Mr. C’s reputation had been harmed, and the business of Mr. C’s company were doomed.
Mr. C, as tenacious as he was, did not give up.
Instead, he thought maybe a different lawyer can get the things done. And who could say he’s wrong? He contacted our law firm, at which point our experienced litigation lawyer Sylvia Tsai came to help.
After carefully studying all of the materials, Ms. Tsai developed a series of strategies and issued a letter to the public forum where the article was posted.
Wu-hoot! Just one week after we deliver the letter, the forum removed the defamatory article!
Now you may wonder how one letter could solve such a problem that had lasted for almost a year. Here’s the secret:
1. Knowing your enemy
At first thought, you might think that the slanderer should be the target.
It’s true that a slanderer could be fined or even imprisoned. However, in this case, the slander was hidden behind anonymity. The only entity we knew about was the forum. Furthermore, the most important thing for Mr. C was to remove the defamatory articles with the intention of ending the harm that they were causing him and his business. At this point, the forum is the target instead of the slanderer.
Hence, identifying what the right target is and who your enemy is at this moment is the first step needed for success.
2. Proper communication is essential to convince the other side to accept your request
Our litigation team paid a lot of attention to the wording and tone of the letter. Here’s how we do it:
Freedom of speech is one of the cornerstone of the U.S. society. We know that it would be difficult to get the court to regulate certain speech or ask to court to direct the internet forum to remove the article, even if they’re false. Therefore, we know it would be a tough fight against the forum even if we bring it to the court, and thus the standard threatening language is of no use here. Instead, we need to be firm enough to let the forum realize it was their responsibility to combat false speech on their media but without being too aggressive.
Also, we noticed that the forum did not remove the defamatory article but did remove Mr. C’s response to that article, in an attempt to clarify the events. We pointed out that the forum’s blocking of Mr. C’s official clarification statement and account was a discriminatory event in order to alert the forum.
3. Use carrot-and-stick approach to make the target clearly imagine what the consequences are of failing to do as requested
Finally, after studying the policies of other major forums and social media sites on combating false speech, we used them to set examples for the forum and educated the forum on what a proper public forum should do under the circumstance.
What this story tells us about what makes a good attorney letter:
It’s not enough to only state legal opinions and request the opposing party to cease their behavior. What’s more important is to find the right strategies to target what the main points are, which requires grasping the whole picture of the situation. By doing this, one letter managed to be powerful enough to solve a problem that hadn’t been solved in almost a year.
When you encounter a legal issue, just like Mr. C, what you need to do is to find the right lawyer, not just any lawyer, who can truly help you against defamation with the right strategies.
Still got questions? Consult us today!