Opinion
May 4, 2000.
Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Ira Gammerman, J.), entered June 16, 1999, which, insofar as appealed from, granted, in part, defendants' motion for summary judgment dismissing plaintiff's cause of action for defamation, unanimously affirmed, without costs.
Taraneh Moayed, for Plaintiff-Appellant-Respondent.
Howard J. Rubin, for Defendants-Respondents-Appellants.
SULLIVAN, P.J., NARDELLI, TOM, WALLACH, LERNER, JJ.
The action was properly dismissed upon evidence establishing that defendants' CEO did not make the statements attributed to him in the offending article, and that the statements he did make at the employees-only meeting allegedly reported in the offending article are not susceptible of a defamatory meaning. Assuming in plaintiff's favor that one of defendants' employees was the source of the misreport of the CEO's statements in the offending article, defendants' evidence, namely, the transcript of the CEO's speech at the employees-only meeting, establishes that such employee would have been violating a clear directive not to talk to the press, and thus acting outside the scope of his or her employment.
THIS CONSTITUTES THE DECISION AND ORDER OF SUPREME COURT, APPELLATE DIVISION, FIRST DEPARTMENT.