Defamation of governments and government enterprises

Abstract

This article examines the law on whether a governmental body or a commercial enterprise owned by a government can maintain an action for defamation. It is now widely accepted that a government cannot sue for defamation. But this is not a unanimous view. The extent to which the bar to governmental defamation actions applies to government-owned enterprises is uncertain. In the reported cases, courts have rejected defamation actions by government-owned commercial enterprises. However, government ownership should not categorically prevent a corporation from having the remedies for false defamatory statements available to other corporations.