They are telling people things about you that are not true.

NY CPLR § 215(3) · CIVIL RIGHTS LAW § 76-a

The elements, in plain English.

To have a defamation claim in New York, you need all of these:

• A false statement of fact. Not an opinion, not an insult, not an exaggeration everyone would recognize as such. A claim that can be checked and is wrong.
• About you. Identifiably, even if your name is not used.
• Published to a third party. Said or written to at least one person other than you. A nasty text sent only to you is not defamation; the same text forwarded to your sister is.
• With fault. For a private person on a private matter, negligence is enough: the speaker should have known better. For matters of public concern, the standard is higher.
• Causing harm, unless the statement falls into a per se category, in which case harm is presumed.

Written statements, including texts, posts, and emails, are libel. Spoken statements are slander. The distinction matters mostly for damages: slander generally requires proof of specific financial loss unless it falls into a per se category.

The per se categories.

New York treats four kinds of false statement as defamatory per se, meaning the law presumes they damage your reputation and you do not have to prove a specific loss:

1. Accusing you of a serious crime.
2. Statements that injure you in your trade, business, or profession.
3. Claiming you have a loathsome disease.
4. Imputing unchastity to a woman.

The first two cover most of what we see. "He assaulted me" and "she stole from her last employer" are accusations of serious crimes. "He is a fraud, do not hire him" and "she got fired for incompetence" injure a person in their profession. The third and fourth are older categories and less common in practice, but a false claim that someone has a sexually transmitted infection, for instance, still fits.

If the statement does not fit a per se category, you need to show what it cost you: a lost job, a lost contract, a measurable consequence. "People think less of me" is real but it is not, on its own, enough.

The situations we see most.

The ex. After a breakup, one party tells mutual friends, family, or the internet that the other was abusive, cheated, has a disease, or is dangerous. Where the statement is a specific false accusation of a crime, it is per se defamation. Where it is "he was a terrible boyfriend," it is opinion. Where it is true, it is true, and no letter changes that.

The coworker or former employer. False statements to a manager, HR, or a prospective employer about your conduct, honesty, or competence injure you in your profession. Be aware that some workplace communications, such as a reference given in good faith or a statement made in an HR investigation, can be protected by a qualified privilege, which the speaker loses only if they abused it, for example by acting out of spite or knowing the statement was false. Our employment lawyer page covers the workplace side more broadly.

The community post. A neighborhood group, a parents' group, a building group chat, or a local subreddit where someone posts that you are a scammer, a predator, or a thief. These spread fast and are hard to correct. They are also the cases most likely to involve the anti-SLAPP analysis below, because a post warning a community about someone can be framed as speech on a matter of public interest.

The one-year period.

New York's statute of limitations for libel and slander is one year, under CPLR § 215(3), running from the date the statement was first made or posted. Not from when you learned of it. Not from the most recent time someone repeated it. One year from first publication. If the statement is being repeated by the same person in new conversations or new posts, each new statement is its own publication with its own year, but the original one expires on schedule. Act on the timeline that this creates.

The retraction demand.

The central demand in an individual defamation letter is not just "stop." It is "retract." The letter identifies each false statement, quotes it where possible, explains why it is false, states the defamation claim and the per se category where one applies, and demands three things by a date: that the person stop making the statement, that they remove it where it was posted, and that they issue a written retraction, in a form we specify, to the same audience that received the original.

The retraction is what actually repairs the harm. A deleted post leaves the people who saw it believing what they read. A retraction to the same group chat, the same friends, the same manager, corrects the record. People resist retractions more than takedowns, because it requires admitting they were wrong, so the letter gives a reason to do it anyway: a retraction now, in exchange for a release, versus a lawsuit in which the retraction is the minimum they will be giving up.

What a cease and desist letter does here.

Most people spreading lies about an individual are doing it because they are angry and because there has been no cost. The letter introduces a cost. It shows that a New York attorney has evaluated the statements and found them actionable, it puts the speaker on notice that continuing is knowing and deliberate, it gives them a specific way out, and it sets a date. It also creates evidence: a speaker who responds with more accusations, or who tells a third party about the letter, has usually just helped your case.

It works best when the statements are specific, false, provable, and made by an identifiable person to an identifiable audience. It works worst in the situations described next.

When the letter backfires, honestly.

We decline to send defamation letters in a real fraction of the cases that come to us, for one of these reasons.

The Streisand effect. A letter can become content. If the speaker posts it, the story is no longer "someone said something false about me in a group with forty members." It is "I received a threatening legal letter and here it is," seen by thousands. The people most likely to do this are the people most likely to have spread the lie in the first place. If the original statement has limited reach and the speaker is attention-seeking, silence sometimes wins, and we will say so.

Anti-SLAPP exposure. New York's anti-SLAPP statute, Civil Rights Law § 76-a, covers claims based on speech in a public forum in connection with an issue of public interest, defined broadly. A public post warning others about a person's alleged conduct can fall inside it. If it does, you must prove the speaker knew the statement was false or recklessly disregarded the truth, and a dismissed claim can leave you paying their attorney's fees. A letter threatening a claim you could be sanctioned for filing is a bad letter.

Truth, or something close to it. If the core of the statement is true and the inaccuracy is in the details, a defamation claim will fail, and a letter invites the speaker to document the true part.

Opinion dressed as fact. "I think he is dangerous" is opinion. "He assaulted me on March 4" is fact. A lot of what gets called lying is the first kind, and no letter touches it.

Privilege. Statements made in court papers, to the police in a complaint, or in certain workplace and official settings can be absolutely or qualifiedly privileged. We check before writing.

Next steps and related pages.

If the letter is ignored and the claim is strong, the next step is a lawsuit in Supreme Court, which is the court that can order a retraction and award damages; small claims can award money only, and defamation damages are rarely the kind of fixed sum that fits there. The cease and desist hub explains how the whole process works. If the lies come with relentless contact, harassment cease and desist letters addresses that. If it is a business being reviewed falsely, fake online reviews is the right page. And our flat-fee demand letters page explains how we prepare and send the letter.