## Facts

- Incumbent members of the Rusk County Board ran for reelection.
- Four days before the election, two private individuals mailed two- to three-page letters to electors criticizing and characterizing the incumbents’ votes on county board matters, including spending and taxes.
- The candidates alleged the letters contained false statements and misrepresentations about specific resolutions, the effect of their votes, and the procedural and factual background of the resolutions.
- The candidates alleged the mailings were intended to lower their standing in the community and deter electors from voting for them.
- The candidates’ pleadings did not identify specific passages in the letters claimed to be defamatory; instead, the allegations attacked the letters generally.

## Issues

1. Whether alleged misrepresentations in campaign letters about candidates’ voting records and the effect/background of those votes were capable of a defamatory meaning as a matter of law.
2. Whether alleged violations of Wisconsin election-law provisions regulating false campaign statements constitute defamation per se and modify the common-law elements of defamation.

## Decision

- The Wisconsin Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment for the defendants.
- The court held that misrepresenting or characterizing how candidates voted on specific issues, in the context presented, was not defamatory as a matter of law.
- The court held that alleged violations of Wisconsin election-law provisions (including Wis. Stat. § 12.05) do not constitute defamation per se and do not alter common-law defamation requirements.
- Because the communications were not capable of a defamatory meaning, no genuine issue of material fact existed on the defamation claim, making summary judgment proper.

## Legal Principles

- A statement is defamatory if it tends to harm reputation by lowering the person in the community’s estimation or deterring others from associating or dealing with the person.
- Courts decide as a matter of law whether a communication is capable of a defamatory meaning, construing words in their plain and popular sense and in context.
- Political communications criticizing elected officials’ votes on public issues are generally treated as political advocacy and evaluation of official conduct; misstatements about voting records, without more, are not inherently defamatory.
- Statutes will not be read to change the common law absent clear legislative intent; Wisconsin’s election-law provisions regulating campaign falsehoods do not create defamation per se or eliminate common-law defamation elements.
- Summary judgment is appropriate when, even taking allegations in the nonmovant’s favor, the challenged communication is not capable of a defamatory meaning as a matter of law.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed dismissal of the candidates’ defamation suit because campaign letters criticizing and allegedly misstating their voting records were not capable of a defamatory meaning, and alleged violations of election-law prohibitions on false campaign statements did not create defamation per se or modify common-law defamation standards.


Tatur v. Solsrud, 167 Wis. 2d 266, 481 N.W.2d 657 (Wis. Ct. App. 1992)