Summary

In Brian v Richardson, 85 NY2d 808,637 N.Y.S.2d 347 [1995], the Court of Appeals stated "the essence of the tort libel is the publication of a statement about an individual that is both false and defamatory. Since falsity is a sine qua non of a libel claim and since only assertions of fact are capable of being proven false, we have consistently held that a libel action cannot be maintained unless it is premised on published assertions of fact."