The Court of First Instance No. 51 of Madrid dismissed the lawsuit filed by a basketball coach, after verifying that the statements of the defendants were not insulting.
The defendants, players of the national basketball team, gave an interview to the newspaper El País, in which they accused their former coach of subjecting them to continuous psychological abuse that led to eating disorders and depressive episodes.
As a result of these statements, the coach filed a lawsuit against them, considering that their statements were insulting and false, and that they were issued in retaliation for their marginalization from the national basketball team. He argued that their right to honor and image had been violated, and requested that they be sentenced to pay 200,000 euros in compensation for damages.
In its substantive considerations, the Court observes that the right to honor “(…) includes both the estimation that each person has of himself, as well as the consideration that third parties have for him and that, in any case, it is not an absolute right. since it must be weighed against freedom of expression and information.”
In the specific case, it observes that both parties are persons of notorious public relevance, and in this regard it indicates that “(…) persons who exercise public functions or those of social relevance have to bear the risk that their subjective rights (among them, the honor ) are affected by the opinions of other people in the exercise of the freedoms of information and expression.”
It adds that “(…) the weighting technique requires assessing the relative weight of the respective fundamental rights that collide. From this perspective, the weighting must take into account whether the information or criticism is of public relevance or general interest insofar as it can contribute to the debate in a democratic society when it is projected on people who hold public office or have a political personality or are , simply, to satisfy the human curiosity to know the life of people with public notoriety who do not exercise such functions”.
In short, the Court considers “(…) that all the circumstances set forth above determine that the plaintiff’s right to honor should not prevail over the freedom of expression that corresponds to the defendants, which must be specially protected in a state of law in order to form a plural public opinion. Ultimately, the purpose of this process is limited to determining whether the expressions uttered, in the context analyzed above, fall within the framework of the right to freedom of expression and its prevalence over the plaintiff’s right to honor, which, in the opinion of this Judge, deserves an affirmative answer for the set of arguments set forth above”.
Based on the foregoing, the Court decided to dismiss the claim on the grounds that the plaintiff’s right to honor and self-image had not been violated.
See judgment of the Court of First Instance No. 51 of Madrid 362/2022.
