THE TWITTER/X POSTS REFERRING TO PLAINTIFF AS A “STALKER” AND STATING “THAT MAN HAS HARMED MULTIPLE WOMEN AND IS ABUSIVE AND MANIPULATIVE …” WERE DEEMED NONACTIONABLE OPINION AND THE DEFAMATION ACTION WAS DISMISSED (FIRST DEPT).

The First Department, reversing Supreme Court, determined Supreme Court properly found that the anti-SLAPP statute applied to this defamation, but the defamation complaint should have been dismissed because the Twitter/X posts constituted nonactionable opinion:

Plaintiff and defendant were PhD students at Columbia University … and were enrolled in the same seminar … . Plaintiff alleges that he was defamed by two Tweets defendant posted on Twitter (now X) … .. In response to seeing a picture of plaintiff with “a prominent scholar, attorney, abolitionist, and author,” defendant retweeted the post with a meme stating, “if I speak, Twitter will suspend me,” followed by a comment “I am triggered.” She then separately tweeted, without naming plaintiff or the other individual in the photograph, “when the abolitionist posts your stalker,” followed later by a comment to her Tweet “that man has harmed multiple women and is abusive and manipulative but congratulations on his dissertation, I guess.” …

… [Supreme Court] should … have granted defendant’s motion to dismiss the complaint because plaintiff failed to show … that his claims had a substantial basis in law (Civil Rights Law §§ 70—a, 76—a; CPLR 3211[g] …). Defamation requires a false statement of fact and is judged from the perspective of an average, reasonable reader … . Context is critical for social media statements, where hyperbole and rhetorical exaggeration are common and are less likely to be interpreted literally … . Read in context, defendant’s tweets were emotionally charged reactions written in Twitter’s vernacular and accompanied by rhetoric, signaling that they were nonactionable opinions … .  Talbert v Tynes, 2026 NY Slip Op 01478, First Dept 3-17-26

Practice Point: Consult this decision for insight into the way courts interpret “hyperbole and rhetorical exaggeration” in the context of a defamation action based upon Twitter/X posts.​