In a hotly contested decision, a plurality of the Ohio Supreme Court held for the first time that a claim for defamation is subject to the discovery rule, greatly expanding the potential for businesses and individuals to find themselves subject to a defamation lawsuit in the Buckeye state.

Defamation Claims and Ohio’s Statute of Limitations

Ohio law makes clear that a cause of action for libel must be commenced “within one year after the cause of action accrued.”  R.C. § 2305.11(A).  As the dissent noted, “[f]or more than 170 years, the statute of limitations for a defamation claim in Ohio—slander or libel—has been one year from the date that the cause of action accrued and the cause of action accrued on the date of publication.” However, in Weidman, the Ohio Supreme Court, for the first time, found that the discovery rule applied to defamation claims.

The Discovery Rule

Under the discovery rule, “a cause of action does not arise until the plaintiff discovers, or by the exercise of reasonable diligence should have discovered, that he or she was injured by the wrongful conduct of the defendant.”  The rationale behind this exception to the general rule of statute of limitations is to permit those who are injured sufficient time to seek relief on the merits without undue prejudice on a defendant. 

Limitation on the Discovery Rule’s Application

In an attempt to limit its holding, the Supreme Court found that the discovery rule would apply to a claim for libel “based on reputational injuries when the secretive, concealed, or otherwise inherently unknowable to the plaintiff due to the nature of the publication.”  Thus, it appears that defamation claims based upon a written publication that is neither secretive nor concealed would still be subject to the one-year statute of limitations.

The Takeaway

Regardless, Weidman represents a veritable sea change with respect to when a cause of action for defamation actually begins to run and could open up the proverbial flood gates to claims of libel above and beyond the one-year statute of limitations for such claims under the Ohio Revised Code.