Libel is defamation with a paper trail. An email to your employer, a letter to the co-op board, a flyer in the lobby, a text message forwarded to your clients, a complaint copied to people who had no reason to see it. In New York, written defamation is treated as the more serious form precisely because it lasts and travels, and for the person on the receiving end, that same permanence is the evidence.
For libel, New York generally presumes harm to reputation; you do not have to prove a specific financial loss the way you usually must for spoken slander. If the statement also falls in a per se category, a false accusation of a serious crime, a statement injuring your trade or profession, a loathsome disease, serious sexual misconduct, the presumption is at its strongest. And unlike slander, the words are fixed: there is no argument about what was said.
Cessation, stop making the statement, in any form, to anyone. Retraction, a written correction sent to everyone who received the original; the letter encloses proposed retraction language so the speaker has no drafting excuse. Deletion, where the statement exists in a form that can be removed. Preservation, every copy, draft, message, and recipient list kept intact. And a deadline, typically five to ten days, with a statement that all remedies are reserved.
An ex-employee emails your clients that you "cook the books." A tenant writes the board that you "assaulted a neighbor." A competitor mails a flyer claiming your license was "revoked for fraud." A former friend texts a group chat that you "have a record." Each is a written statement of fact, each is false, each lands in a per se category, and each is a one-page letter from counsel away from being a documented legal matter instead of a rumor.
Opinion, however harsh, is protected. A true statement is a complete defense. A written complaint to a court, a police department, or a licensing agency is generally privileged even if false, the remedy there is different. And an honest customer review is protected speech under New York's anti-SLAPP law (Civil Rights Law § 76-a); a letter demanding its removal can cost you the reviewer's attorney's fees. The attorney's screening before drafting is what keeps you on the right side of that line.
One year from publication (CPLR 215(3)). For the first move, the attorney-signed defamation cease and desist ($499 flat) is drafted for the medium: it quotes the writing verbatim, names every recipient, cites the per se category, encloses the retraction, and goes out by mail and email within 48 hours. If the statements were posted online rather than sent, see online defamation in New York; if you'd rather draft your own first, read what every line of the letter does.
If it's a false statement of fact about you and the recipient is someone other than you, yes, publication to a single third party is enough.
Generally no. New York presumes reputational harm from libel, and the presumption is strongest for per se statements. Proof of actual loss increases what you can recover but isn't required to have a claim.
Repeating a defamatory statement is itself publication. 'I heard that' does not make a false accusation true, and the republisher is liable alongside the original speaker.
Yes. A retraction to the same audience is the core demand in a libel letter, and ours encloses proposed retraction text so there is no dispute over wording.