Colson v. Stieg

Plaintiff appeals from an order of the trial court granting defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s amended complaint.

The defendant urged three grounds as bases for his motion to dismiss: First, under the innocent construction rule, two alleged defamatory statements were nonactionable as a matter of law; second, the statements were privileged; and third, the complaint failed properly to allege actual malice in that it failed to allege sufficient facts to support such a claim.

Plaintiff was an associate professor in the department of library sciences at Northern Illinois University who sought…