Marston v. Newavom

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine

Decided July 30, 1993

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine · decided 1993-07-30

Relies on Knoppers v. Rumford Community Hospital

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1993-07-30

How this case has been cited

Cited by 27 later decisions — most recently March 2022 · most notably Raymond Veilleux Kelly Veilleux Peter Kennedy v. National Broadcasting Company Alan Handel Fred Francis Raymond Veilleux Kelly Veilleux Peter Kennedy (2000), Penobscot Indian Nation v. Key Bank (1997)

4 federal appellate · 6 district · 13 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

ROBERTS, Justice,

¶1with whom CLIFFORD, Justice joins, concurring in part and dissenting in part.

¶2I agree with the Court’s decision affirming the award of damages for defamation. I respectfully disagree with the Court’s application of 26 M.R.S.A. § 626. We stated in Knoppers v. Rumford Community Hospital, 531 A.2d 1276, 1280 (Me.1987), that the Legislature intended that section 626 apply to “working people who are dependent upon full and regular wage payments to meet their weekly needs.” That limitation would exclude salaried corporate executives. See Black’s Law Dictionary 1200 (5th ed. 1979). Whether dicta or not, our statement in Knoppersshould control the application of section 626 until the effective date of the 1991 amendment.