united-states defamation workplace
Can you get sued for gossiping about an incompetent tech lead if you believe you&#39;re saying the truth?
<p>Can one get sued for gossiping about an incompetent tech lead if you believe you're saying the truth? Let's say a person tells one of his or her coworkers that this tech lead isn't qualified for his job and cannot tell whether a junior developer is a senior developer. Can teh speaker get sued for it?</p>
<p>I think I had to say it, because the guy literally hired junior developers and tried to gaslight me into believing they were senior when they could not complete a landing page after 4 months and returning their terrible work with constructive feedback and identifying several bugs in an interminable circle of mess where they would generate 2 bugs for every fix they made, which is completely absurd.</p>
<p>Would a potential suit have merit, and how would it play out?</p>

<p>Your belief in the truth of a statement is of only limited value in a defamation suit. Saying that a person is incompetent in that person's profession can certainly be defamation, and may even be defamation <em>per se</em>, depending on the jurisdiction. If the person sues and the speaker asserts truth as a defense, the speaker may have to <strong>prove</strong> that the statement is true.</p>
<p>Why would one need to say anything at all in such a situation?</p>
<p>Whether such a statement was a factual statement or a statement of opinion would depend very much on the detailed circumstances. But it is at least possible that a suit might be filed and won on this fact pattern.</p>
<p>See <a href="https://law.stackexchange.com/a/79461/17500">this answer</a> for more on defamation under US law.</p>

<h2>Yes</h2>
<p>What you believe it irrelevant.</p>
<p>For defamation law, what matters is if the statement is an opinion or a statement of fact and if it is <em>objectively</em> true or not.</p>
<p>Saying someone is incompetent or not qualified for their job is a statement of fact because competence and qualifications are objective - not a matter of opinion. So, if they sued you for saying that, <em>you</em> would need to prove that it was true. For example, by demonstrating that they lacked a required qualification for their job or that they had been formally disciplined by a governing body that had demonstrated “incompetence”.</p>
<p>Saying that you weren’t satisfied with their performance and wouldn’t use them again is not defamatory because that is your opinion, not a statement of fact.</p>
