Can a Plaintiff Ever Win a Libel/Slander/Defamation Claim Based on Statements Made on April 1st?

I’ve always wondered whether a plaintiff could bring a successful libel/slander/defamation claim based upon statements made on April 1st, i.e., April Fools’ Day. In looking at some case law, it seems that such a claim can be successful but is difficult to prove. For instance, consider the opinion of the Superior Court of Connecticut in Victoria Square, LLC v. Glastonbury Citizen, 891 A.2d 142 (Conn.Super. 2006).

In Victoria Square, the defendant newspaper published an “April Fool’s Day” edition. In the edition, there was an article

entitled: “Sakon to Build Hooters, Wal–Mart,” [which] state[d] that the plaintiffs planned to build a 250,000 square foot Wal–Mart store and the state’s largest Hooters restaurant. The complex to be built would also, supposedly, include a helicopter launching pad. The parties agree that the alleged facts set forth in the article are false. The article appeared on the same page as articles announcing that a Glastonbury student had won a Noble Prize, the discovery of a “black hole” at a local school, and other improbable “news” stories.

In response, the plaintiffs demanded a retraction of the story and later brought a defamation claim against the newspaper. The court, however, granted the newspaper’s motion for summary judgment, concluding that

Defamation is, by its nature, mutually exclusive of parody. By definition, defamation requires a false statement of fact; parody, to the degree that it is perceived as parody by its intended audience, conveys the message that it is not the original and, therefore, cannot constitute a false statement of fact. “If a parody could be actionable because, while recognizable as a joke, it conveyed an unfavorable impression, very few journalistic parodies could survive.”…

No such reasonable reader could construe the article in question as anything other than a parody. The defendants took considerable care to make it clear that the page where this article appeared did “NOT” contain genuine news stories. The article is surrounded by other mock articles which any reasonable reader would quickly determine to be both false and humorous. Finally, the article itself described development plans which were so extreme as to be obviously preposterous. The plaintiffs were, supposedly, planning to build a 250,000 square foot Wal–Mart store on the property; this would have been substantially larger than the building the plaintiffs wanted to construct. A helicopter launching pad in a shopping center in Glastonbury is equally ridiculous to contemplate. If none of this put the reader on notice that they were reading a parody, the statement that the Hooters logo would be positioned so as to face a local church and an elementary school would almost certainly get the point across.

-CM