The Connecticut Supreme Court recently allowed a defamation action based on statements made at a municipal public hearing, holding that statements made in that forum did not warrant the same privilege as those made in a judicial proceeding.

The decision in Priore v. Haig, 344 Conn. 636 (2022), decided September 7, arose from a dispute between neighbors in Greenwich. The plaintiff filed an action for defamation against the defendant, a neighbor who made disparaging comments about him at a planning and zoning commission hearing.

The trial and appellate courts agreed that the defendant’s statements were entitled to immunity from any defamation claim because the hearing was “quasi-judicial” and the defendant’s statements were relevant to the hearing, and dismissed the claim.

But the Connecticut Supreme Court took a different view, holding that the planning and zoning commission hearing was not a quasi-judicial proceeding, and therefore statements made at the hearing were not immune from liability for defamation.

The Court’s ruling started from the general rule that communications uttered during the course of judicial proceedings are absolutely privileged from defamation claims. The same privilege extends to administrative proceedings if they are determined to be quasi-judicial in nature. The Court acknowledged that what was “quasi-judicial” had not been sufficiently defined under Connecticut law.

The Court’s decision turned on the fact that the commission hearing had “almost no procedural safeguards in place to ensure the reliability of the information presented at the proceeding” and was therefore not a quasi-judicial proceeding. Id. at 655.

This decision is significant for its analysis of what is required to extend the defamation protection for statements made in judicial proceedings to statements made outside formal, judicial proceedings.

Read the full opinion here.