Isn’t the real issue more about the mention or portrayal of an existing person within the context of the future? I’d think the real concern would be whether or not your future portrayal/mention is defamatory or not, not just whether it exists.
Presumably, mentioning someone in a future setting as Prime Minister is kind of the opposite of defamatory. On the other hand, if the mention was a passing reference to “Boris Johnson, convicted of goat-fornicating and pedophilia in 2025”, I could see how he might not like that, future, fictional, or otherwise.
Then it’s no longer a passing reference, is it? You’ve just reversed the discussion. That’s not the real issue - it’s a different issue.
There is no law that governs peoples’ names. There are defamation laws that can be applied to actual harm. A huge gulf stands between them. As usual, the exact context makes all the difference. Nobody can discuss a hypothetical without taking context into consideration.
The OP gave us that context:
I get that people want to extend discussions indefinitely. It’s critical that the discussions don’t get mixed up inside one another. Defamation and a passing reference should be carefully separated at all times.
But doesn’t the defamatory nature kind of define whether or not it would be acceptable? I mean, even a passing reference to someone living in a defamatory context would probably get negative attention, without explicitly saying he screwed goats or whatever.
Just about ANY mention of a living person with reference to their potential future activities has the potential of being complimentary or defamatory, unless that passing future reference is wholly about current achievements, not potential future ones.
And I know that they can sue you for whatever reason they want, reasonable or not. I’m saying that in order to actually stand a chance of winning, wouldn’t it probably have to be a defamatory future mention? It would seem to me that having a passing mention of St. Francis of Buenos Aires would hardly be defamatory, while mention of excommunicated Pope Francis I would probably be considered a different story.
The point I was attempting to make (apparently not very clearly) is that if you mention some living person with a degree of wealth and resources, and that person decides to take offence no matter how irrational that might be, they can use their resources to make trouble for you through legal action, no matter how unjustified or unsustainable it might be. And if you have no resources of your own to respond appropriately, you could be truly fucked.
Since I’m the one who started by saying “Any idiot can sue you at any time for any reason.” I think you can tell I’m aware of the situation.
And you’re the one who cited a case in which using a fictional name was no bar to a suit.
So according to this logic you can’t use real world names or real world situations in fiction because you might get sued. Now what? Well, in the real world you use real world names and real world situations. Because they are inescapable in any fiction that means anything at all. You can’t even write comic books or science fiction without them. (My favorite worst example was Cleve Cartmill’s WWII-era atomic war story “Deadline” in which the two sides were the Sixa and Seilla.)
If you disagree, let’s hear your solution that would make suits impossible.
The situation used to be very different in England in the 1920’s. If you made up a name for a character, and it turned out there was a real person (often a wholly obscure person) of that name, unscrupulous solicitors would contact them and egg them on to sue, even if there was no trace of defamation.
This became a real problem and the libel laws were changed in the 1930’s. Sorry no cite as away from home.
IIRC the disclaimer came because of the movie about Rasputin. It portrayed his murder, and the intro or ending said something like “this is a true story…”
One of the guys who supposedly killed Rasputin and apparently was recognizable in the movie sued; apparently he didn’t like the way he was portrayed. (Inept buffoon? They poisoned, shot, bludgeoned and drowned the guy before he was finally dead.) As a result, Hollywood has found it prudent to add the disclaimer on even obviously historical dramas.
And of course, in The Good Old Days, being labelled a victim of rape was considered a pretty vicious slander.
But note the distinction for our OP - the studio did not use the real name, but the relationships made the person very identifiable. They then implied the person was a rape victim, a very humiliating situation in those days. Finally, they compounded it by stating this was a true story. …and then got sued in England.