Some of you out there in SDMB land are authors or professional writers and I would like to pick your brains, please.
If I were to write an article concerning my city, not all of it flattering, do I need permission to mention not only the name of the place, but the names of people, home town stores and national chains?
I was reading Stephen King the other day when I thought about it and noticed that in his book ‘It’ he gives credit to the authors of songs he mentioned in the work as well as credit to owners of some poetry and scripts, mention that permission was granted to use whatever he used.
So, if I say that Mayor John Smith was a slob, whose real-estate business ‘Skru U, Inc.,’ just ‘happened’ to obtain the choicest lands going up for tax sales, could I be sued?
Or, if I mention that REXALL Drugs was the last place in town to have a soda counter and we all used to shop at Woolworth’s, do I need their permission to use their company names?
I was a communications major in undergrad and took 1 class in communication law. Take this with a huge grain of salt and I will quickly defer to anyone having more experience (just about everybody).
I think that I remember that you can state what people are doing in public. If it is out in the open, you’re OK. As far as making allegations goes, truth is the ultimate defense. If the allegations you make are true and can be shown as such, you’re OK. However, if you are unable to prove the claims you’ve made, you are up the creek.
Again I’ll state that my knowledge comes from a class I took in college about 10 years ago. I’d consult a professional in these matters. But that is my $0.02.
AVSC916,
I have a web site & I like to write like that too. However, I haven’t been sued but I have been threatened to be sued, which seems to be what they prefer to do these days.
It was pretty mild stuff. e.g. Several times I went into a real estate office & asked for a list of rentals, the bitch wouldn’t give them to me. I asked if they have any in my price range she said no. One day years later I saw they have a place to rent for $695.00. I went in asked for rentals $700 or less. She said they don’t have any. I told her about the one they do have & she got caught with her pants down. So I wrote on my web site ‘so & so doesn’t give lists to handicapped people’. About a year later I got a nasty email from the owner who found it on the net. He threatened to sue me but I told him it was completely true. He didn’t know the bitch didn’t give me lists & promised to correct that so I changed the web page.
However, the search engines still have it listed when searching for his busines, haha.
I’d go the Dragnet route and change the names of all parties to “protect the innocent”. I’d also change just enough information to make it less likely that anyone can identify him/herself from your description.
Yes, you can be sued. You can be sued for anything. The question is whether the suit will be thrown out of court, or if the plaintiff has some real chance of winning.
Now, you can certainly use the name of a real city for fictional events. Look at, say, Marvel Comics and New York City. You can also use the names of real businesses and people, but it gets murky once you portray any of these in an unflattering light. If you say that Rexall Drugstores are owned by the Columbian Drug Cartel™ and is supplying drugs to dealers throughout Buffalo, you could be in trouble. There are loopholes – if the crime is so far-fetched that a reasonable reader would not assume that the company is actually committing it.
For people, there are many issues. You can’t libel anyone, but “libel” isn’t easily defined, and anyone like the mayor would be considered a “public figure” under the law, which gives you more leeway.
Now, for a work of fiction, there’s really no reason not to follow msrobyn’s advice and just change the names.
BTW, using songs or poems is a different matter; you must get permission.
If you’re not saying anything that people (or companies) wouldn’t say about themselves, no worries. If you are, big worries. There is more to it than just whether or not what you write is true. What matters is: can you PROVE it is true? In a court room? Your legal resources against theirs? And are you willing to take that risk - factoring in time and hassle as well as money - rather than just changing the names? You can tell your truths and scribe your vision, but you don’t need to mess with the libel laws as well.
Actually, handy, your statement was not completely true, and at least in the U.S. could get you sued for libel. We have periodic discussions of this type on my freelancer mailing list, whenever someone wants to “tattle” on a client for not paying an invoice or otherwise being a prick. The way it works is this:
So in your case, handy, you would be safe to say that you are deaf and that this agency would not give you a list of rentals (which may or may not have been because of your disability). However, extrapolating this to say that they never give rental lists to any disabled people is beyond the scope of your personal knowledge and is dangerous.
(I have been in a situation where someone was threatening (perhaps frivolously, but threatening all the same) to sue me for slander/defamation because I was telling people about something he had done to me in the course of my business dealings with him. What I was saying was completely true and stated in terms of the facts, but because the incident occurred at his place of business, with only his employees for witnesses, it would have been hard for me to prove in court, as a case of “he said, she said.” So there’s that issue as well.)
