A panel of the Illinois Appellate Court on Tuesday overturned the Circuit Court of Cook County’s dismissal of real-time visibility provider project44’s defamation suit against rival firm FourKites. Now project44 is free to continue its pursuit of the case in Circuit Court, where it will need to prove that it suffered reputational damage.
The defamation allegations stem from a series of May 2019 emails sent from pseudonymous Gmail accounts to project44 board members Kevin Diestel and Jim Baum and incoming Chief Revenue Officer Tim Bertrand. These emails, allegedly connected to FourKites, purported to warn Diestel, Baum and Bertrand of accounting fraud at project44 — one email compared project44 to the bankrupt biotech startup Theranos — and connections to Chicago organized crime.
In a defamation suit, it’s not sufficient that false statements be made to the plaintiff; because defamation concerns reputational damage, defamation requires that the statements be published to a third party. At the Circuit Court of Cook County, Judge James Snyder ruled that because the defamatory claims were only published to officers and agents of project44, the emails essentially “defamed” project44 to itself; that is, project44 board members and executives did not constitute a “third party” who would stand apart from the company’s reputation.
“We do not agree,” wrote Justice David Ellis of the Appellate Court, with Justices Nathaniel Howse and Cynthia Cobbs concurring. “Our law has long...
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