Lawsuit among musicians shows the difficulties in winning a defamation case in New York

This is a complex defamation claim in which a woman publicly claimed her former mentor subjected her to sexual harassment. The mentor claims this was untrue and he sued her for defamation. The Court of Appeals holds there is no actionable defamation because the woman's statements were protected opinion. Since opinion is distinct from factual statements, there is no case.

The case is Coleman v. Grand, issued on November 3. A few preliminaries: first, this case was argued in May 2022 but then on hold because the New York Court of Appeals was considering whether the anti-SLAPP law (prohibiting strategic lawsuits against public participation) had retroactive effect, which would have impacted this case. Turns out the State Court of Appeals held the law was not retroactive. Second, the parties in this case are musicians: the plaintiff mentored the defendant on saxophone. 

In 2017, defendant circulated a letter to about 40 friends and colleagues in the music industry, claiming she had an intermittent quid quo quo sexual relationship with plaintiff, a prominent musician who was 35 years her senior. In the letter, defendant said the plaintiff pressured her into a sexual relationship in exchange for his training and mentorship, and that he routinely pressured her to be intimate with him, made her share a hotel room with him when they traveled for work, would not take "no" for an answer, and once got into bed with her and kissed her after she told him she did not want to sleep with him. She described these incidents as sexual harassment.

Under New York law, unflattering but false facts are defamation. Opinion is not defamation. The Court of Appeals (Sullivan, Chin and Menashi [in dissent]) holds as follows:

(1) claiming that plaintiff "convinced" her to be intimate is not defamation because we don't have enough facts to suggest anything beyond her regrets at this intimacy, and the more reasonable interpretation is that plaintiff merely persuaded defendant to become intimate. This portion of defendant's letter instead describes her "subjective feelings about their relationship," or her nonactionable opinion.

(2) her claim that plaintiff sexually harassed her is also nonactionable because "sexual harassment" "is often a subjective inquiry that permits differing opinions among those involved in, or aware of, the alleged conduct." New York courts hold that allegations of harassment are not defamation because "harassment" is an imprecise term. While the defendant claimed the harassment consisted of getting angry when she refused him sex, photographing her while sleeping, and woke her up half-naked and kissing her on the lips, the Court holds that any conclusion that this amounted to sexual harassment is subjective and provides no basis for a defamation claim. 

(3) defendant's claim that the harassment began after she ended the relationship is also not defamatory because her statement that she no longer wanted a relationship with plaintiff does not expose him to shame or public ridicule, only discomfort. Defamation requires public contempt, not discomfort. As for the harassment allegation, for the reasons outlined above, that is not defamatory.

 

(4) the allegation that defendant was forced to go to plaintiff's room is not actionable, either, as plaintiff takes the defendant's statement out of context; her own letter states she "agreed" to share the room with plaintiff, and nothing in the letter implies that plaintiff physically forced her into the room with him.

 

This case proves how difficult it is to win a defamation case in New York. It is hard to distinguish between nonactionable opinion and actionable false facts. The lengthy factual/opinion analysis in this case highlights the plaintiff's hurdle in bringing these cases to trial. The dissent further shows the complexities of the case. 

 

The dissent from Judge Menashi summarizes defendant's letter this way:

 

 In a letter to friends and colleagues, Maria Grand accused Steven Coleman of sexually harassing her during their professional relationship as musicians. According to Grand, Coleman started the relationship by telling her—when she was seventeen-years old—that he wanted to have sex with her. As Grand’s saxophone teacher, Coleman told Grand “many, many times that the best thing” she could do to learn music was to have sex with male musicians. He even told her “not to contact him [if] [she] didn’t plan on having sex with him.” After Coleman “convinced [Grand] to be intimate with him,” Coleman “started hiring [her] to work with him too.” But when he gave her work, he would “get angry and tell [her] not to finish the work, because [she] wouldn’t sleep with him.” And “[w]henever he offered [her] more work, he would wait until [she] actually slept with him to solidify the dates.” 
 

While on tour, Grand “would have to sleep with [Coleman] at the end of the day” or he would “be absolutely angry and sometimes refuse to rehearse.” “He would relentlessly ask [her] to have sex with him.” He allegedly told Grand that she “owed him ‘a lifetime of pussy’ for what he had taught [her].” After a workshop, Grand and Coleman stayed in the same room together, but despite Grand’s insistence that she would not have sex with Coleman, she woke up to him “half-naked, kissing [her] on the lips.” When Grand’s boyfriend showed up at a concert, Coleman became “extremely angry” and told Grand that “he didn’t want [her] to play on some other gigs he had previously asked [her] to sit in on.”  When Grand refused to have a threesome with Coleman and another woman, Coleman “became furious at [her] for saying no and told [her] not to come to the show that day.” As Grand summarized the relationship, “when I stopped agreeing to sleep with him he stopped granting me access to his knowledge, and he made my professional life with him a complete nightmare.”

This, Menashi says, is actionable defamation. He chides the majority: "The majority might not consider me a right-thinking person, but I would have a negative opinion of someone who behaved the way that Grand described. And it seems to me that her account is either true or false."