from Rodriguez v. Taylor & Francis Group, LLCOn Thursday, Chief Justice Murray Snowe (D-Arizona) ruled:
The lawsuit concerns Dr. Cristobal Rodriguez’s defamation and trade libel claims against Taylor & Francis Group LLC. Dr. Rodriguez is the Associate Dean for Equity, Inclusion, and Community and Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in the Mary Lou Fulton College of Teacher Education at Arizona State University. He studies inclusion and equity in education for “dual language learners, Black, Latinx, and Indigenous” families and students. On March 7, 2022, Dr. Rodriguez and two other authors filed a lawsuit against the company, Education The document is titled “Our Separate Struggles Are Actually One: Building Coalitions and Solidarity for Social and Racial Justice in Education.” Education It is an educational magazine published by the defendant.
Plaintiffs became aware of potential problems with Rodriguez’s article several days after it was published. Plaintiffs and their co-authors researched other published works and discovered that Rodriguez’s article and an article published by Dr. Sonia Douglas Horsford both reference conversations between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez and share similar titles. Dr. Horsford titled her article, “Our Separate Fights Are One: Building a Political and Racial Coalition for Educational Justice…”
On March 12, 2022, Dr. Rodriguez contacted Defendant to inform him of the duplication due to an oversight “to review title similarities with other publications,” suggest a revised title, and ask that the specific references in Rodriguez’s paper be addressed. Plaintiff and co-authors submitted a revised draft of Rodriguez’s paper that included different references and a new title. Defendant accepted the changes and updated the print and online versions. Defendant informed Plaintiff that the editorial board was reviewing the matter, but ceased all further communication with Plaintiff.
On June 20, 2022, the defendant notified the plaintiff of Rodriguez’s article. Education Defendants then published a retraction on their website along with the basis for the retraction. Defendants did not provide Plaintiff with the specific basis for the removal or the specific content of the retraction statement. Defendants then retracted Rodriguez’s article and published a retraction notice on their website that referenced both Rodriguez’s article and Horsford’s article and briefly explained Defendants’ reasons.
Since publication, serious concerns have been raised about the fact that this paper overlaps significantly with the following paper, particularly in terms of ideas related to the title, references and content… As plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics, we are retracting this paper from the journal. We base our decision on our Publication Ethics and Integrity Policy and the COPE Guidelines for Retractions.
The plaintiff states:[t]”Defendants’ continued publication of the retraction on their website is likely to cause significant damage to Dr. Rodriguez and his professional reputation and may bar or prevent future professional advancement opportunities,” the lawsuit states. Plaintiff further alleges that defendants’ public disclosure caused Arizona State University to place him on administrative leave and caused him to lose his administrative position, which he claims has resulted in a significant reduction in his income….
The plaintiff sued for defamation, but the court March 29 The plaintiffs did not sufficiently plead “actual malice,” i.e., that the defendants knew the statements were false or likely to be false.
There is apparently no dispute that the Rodrigues and Horsford papers share a title and some of their content. Absolute identity between the papers is not necessary for plagiarism. In other words, the assertion that there are some differences between the two works, even if the assertion is accurate, does not necessarily exonerate the authors of plagiarism. General assertions alone are too conclusive to make any element of actual bad faith plausible. The same can be said about academic publishers.
Thus, Dr. Rodriguez’s denial of plagiarism, even if true, does not give rise to an inference that Defendants recklessly prepared their retraction, even though Plaintiffs did not provide Defendants with exculpatory information related to that denial and lends credence to Plaintiffs’ allegation that Defendants acted in bad faith in proceeding with the retraction without consulting Plaintiffs….
The March 29 ruling allowed the plaintiffs to add additional allegations to their complaint, but Thursday The court concluded that these additional allegations were insufficient.
Plaintiff adds two additional allegations in connection with its defamation claim: (1) specific descriptions in its March 12, 2022 email to Defendant and (2) “Dr. Horsford’s position.” [s]Plaintiff argues that these two facts provided “sufficient exculpatory information to put Defendants on notice that their subsequent publication of allegations alleging plagiarism in the Retraction Statement was done with malice and/or with reckless disregard for whether the allegations in the Retraction Statement were false.”
Specific explanation in email dated March 12, 2022
Plaintiff’s emails inform Defendant that Rodriguez’s article had a similar title to Horsford’s article, and that the similarity was due to “an oversight in checking the title similarity with other publications.” However, even if that were true, Plaintiff’s emails do not inform Defendant that “[ ] There are serious doubts as to the veracity of the retraction statement.
The retraction statement notes “significant overlaps” not only in titles but also in “references” and “ideas,” neither of which are addressed in the March 12 email…. The body of the email is expressly limited to a conversation about “title similarities.” Plaintiff’s “failure to check the title similarities with other publications” does not reasonably suggest that anything Plaintiff did or did not do in this respect would have prevented plagiarism. Moreover, Plaintiff’s simple, unsupported denial to Defendant that it had committed plagiarism is not sufficient to make persuasive Plaintiff’s argument that Defendant had actual malice in reaching a different conclusion….
Dr. Horsford’s emails to the plaintiff regarding future actions
In her email response to Plaintiff’s offer to make additional changes to the paper, Dr. Horsford wrote that the decision was not hers to make and that she “does not anticipate any special action being taken.” Although not explicitly stated, Plaintiff infers from Dr. Horsford’s email that Defendant inferred, or should have inferred, that Dr. Horsford would have acted differently if she believed her paper had been plagiarized. Thus, according to Plaintiff, Dr. Horsford did not believe Plaintiff had plagiarized and the emails were sufficient to exonerate Defendant and to warn that the subsequent publication of the allegedly plagiarized paper was done in bad faith. This is not a “reasonable inference.”
Plaintiffs argue that when Dr. Horsford wrote that she “did not expect any particular action” she meant that Defendants “did not wish or intend” to take action. Such an inference is unwarranted. Indeed, in the same email, Dr. Horsford clearly wrote that the decision to change the Rodriguez paper was not within her authority, and that she merely informed Plaintiffs of the similarities. Actual malice means that Defendants “had serious doubts about the veracity of the allegations.”
Dr. Horsford’s emails do not give rise to an inference that Defendants “had serious doubts as to the veracity” of Dr. Horsford’s plagiarism in his paper, because such an inference is unjustified from Dr. Horsford’s emails. Thus, Plaintiffs have not adequately alleged actual malice….
Note that the court applied the “actual malice” standard for the following reasons:
Because the plaintiff is a professor employed by a public institution, the parties agree that the plaintiff is a public figure subject to the higher level of proof of “actual malice.”
