Overstock.com, Inc. v. Gradient Analytics, Inc.

Opinion

REARDON, J.

A company that produces and publishes subscriber-based analytic reports on public companies, regularly collaborating with the principals of hedge funds and other institutional investors to produce custom, negative reports on targeted companies, stepped over the line into defamation and other torts with respect to the flurry and timing of reports on an online closeout retailer. The hedge fund principals took short positions in the stock and worked closely with the publisher to put out reports that were anything but the purported unbiased and objective assessment promised to…