Granada Biosciences, Inc. v. Forbes, Inc.

Forbes magazine published an article in which it made negative statements about the Granada Corporation and several businesses within the Granada organization, including Granada Biosciences, Inc. (GBI) (plaintiff). GBI was a publicly traded and well-known company. The Forbes article included claims that GBI had falsified documents, that it had been sued by a well-known millionaire, and that it was broke. GBI and another company within the Granada organization (plaintiff) sued Forbes, Inc. (defendant), the magazine’s publisher, for business disparagement. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of Forbes, and GBI appealed. On appeal, the parties agreed that malice was a required element of business disparagement. However, Forbes argued that defamation and business disparagement were essentially the same tort and that because GBI was a public figure, proof of actual malice was required, just as it would be in a defamation case. Forbes argued that proof of either malicious intent or reckless publishing of a known falsehood was therefore required for a business-disparagement claim to succeed. GBI argued that business disparagement was a separate tort from defamation and that the appropriate definition of malice to apply in a business-disparagement claim was whether a defendant either knew a published statement was false, published a statement with reckless disregard for the truth, acted with ill will, or acted with intent to interfere in a plaintiff’s business interest.