at Rodriguez v. Taylor & Francis Group, LLCThe decision was made Thursday by Chief Judge Murray Snow, D-Ariz.
This lawsuit relates to claims by Dr. Cristobal Rodriguez for defamation and trade insult against Taylor & Frances Group, LLC. Dr. Rodriguez is the Associate Dean for Equity, Inclusion, and Community and Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. He studies inclusion and equity in education for “bilingual learners, Black, Latinx, and Native American” families and students. On March 7, 2022, Dr. Rodriguez and two other authors Educational Research Titled “Our Separate Struggles Are Really One: Building Coalitions and Solidarity for Social and Racial Justice in Education,”… Educational Research This is an educational journal published by the defendant.
The manuscript was made aware of potential problems with Rodriquez’s article just days after it was published. The manuscript and his co-authors investigated other published works and found that Rodriquez’s article and an article published by Dr. Sonya Douglass Horsford shared a reference to a conversation between Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez and had similar titles. Dr. Horsford titled her article, “Our Separate Struggles Are Really One: Building a Political Racial Coalition for Educational Justice…”
On March 12, 2022, Dr. Rodriguez contacted Defendants to inform them that the duplication had occurred due to errors in “checking for similarity in titles to other publications,” errors in suggesting a revised title, and errors in addressing specific references in Rodriguez’s paper. Manuscript and his co-authors submitted a revised draft of Rodriguez’s paper that included different references and a new title. Defendants accepted the changes and updated the print and online publications. Defendants informed Manuscript that the editorial board was reviewing the matter, but ceased all further communication with Manuscript.
On June 20, 2022, Defendant notified Plaintiff that it would remove the Rodriguez article from the issue. Educational Research And publish a retraction on the website with the basis for the retraction. Defendant did not provide Plaintiff with specific grounds for the deletion or specific content of the retraction statement. Defendant then retracted the Rodriguez article and posted a notice of the retraction on the website. This notice referred to both the Rodriguez article and the Horsford article and included a brief explanation of Defendant’s reasoning.
Since publication, there have been significant concerns raised about the substantial duplication of this article with the following article, particularly in ideas related to the title, references, and content… Plagiarism is a serious breach of publication ethics and we are retracting the article from the journal. We have made this decision in accordance with our policy on publication ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retraction.
The manuscript is “[t]Defendants’ continued posting of the retraction statement on their website is highly likely to be damaging to Dr. Rodriguez and his professional reputation, including by prohibiting and hindering future professional development opportunities.” Plaintiff also claims that Arizona State University placed him on administrative leave and that he lost his administrative position as a result of Defendants’ public notice. Plaintiff claims that the loss of that position included a significant loss of income….
The plaintiff filed a lawsuit for defamation, but the court March 29th The plaintiff did not sufficiently allege “actual malice,” meaning that the defendant knew that his statements were false or likely to be false.
There is no apparent dispute that the Rodriguez and Horsford papers share a title and some content. Plagiarism does not require complete identity between papers. In other words, a claim that there are some differences between two works does not necessarily absolve an author of plagiarism, even if such a claim is accurate. Generalized claims alone are too conclusive to make actual malicious intent plausible. The same is true for academic publishers.
Therefore, even if Dr. Rodriguez’s denial of plagiarism were true, it does not give rise to an inference that Defendant was reckless in making the retraction statement without Plaintiff providing Defendant with the information exculpatory regarding Defendant’s denial. This information makes it plausible for Defendant to assert that Defendant acted maliciously in making the retraction statement without further consultation with Plaintiff.
The March 29 decision allowed the plaintiff to add additional claims to his complaint, but thursday The court concluded that these additional arguments were insufficient.
The plaintiff added two additional claims in connection with the defamation suit: (1) a detailed description of the email sent to the defendant on March 12, 2022, and (2) “Dr. Horsford’s position.” [s]He did not and did not intend for Defendant to take further action.” Plaintiff argues that these two facts provide “sufficient exculpatory information to indicate that Defendant’s later disclosure of the claims alleging plagiarism in the retraction was made in bad faith or with reckless disregard for whether the claims in the retraction were false.” …
Specific details from the email dated March 12, 2022
Plaintiff’s email informs Defendant that Rodriguez’s article has a similar title to Horsford’s article, and that the similarity is due to “an error in checking for similarity of titles in other publications.” However, even if this is true, Plaintiff’s email does not provide Defendant with any “enjoyable” information.[ ] There are serious doubts about the truthfulness of the retraction statement.
The retraction statement notes that there is “significant overlap” not only in the title but also in “references” and “ideas,” neither of which were addressed in the March 12 email… The text of the email is clearly limited to a discussion of “title similarity.” The fact that the plaintiff “did not check for title similarity with other publications” does not reasonably suggest that what he did or did not do in this regard prevented plagiarism. Moreover, the plaintiff’s simple and unproven denial that the defendant committed plagiarism is not sufficient to make plausible his claim that the defendant had actual malice in concluding otherwise…
Email from Dr. Horsford to the plaintiff regarding further action
In her email response to the plaintiff’s suggestion that she further revise the article, Dr. Hosford wrote that the decision was not hers to make and that she “did not expect any special action to be taken.” Although not explicitly stated, the plaintiff assumes that the defendant inferred or should have inferred from Dr. Hosford’s email that if Dr. Hosford had believed that her article had been plagiarized, she would have responded differently. Therefore, according to the plaintiff, Dr. Hosford did not believe that the plaintiff had plagiarized, and since the email sufficiently indemnified the defendant, her later publication of the plagiarism allegations was done in bad faith. This is not a “reasonable inference.”
The plaintiff argues that when Dr. Hosford wrote that she “did not expect any particular action to be taken,” she meant that the defendant “did not want or intend” to take action. That inference is not valid. In fact, Dr. Hosford explicitly wrote in the same email that the decision to change the Rodriguez article was not hers to make, and that she merely informed the plaintiff of the similarities. Actual malice means that the defendant “had serious doubts about the truth of the accusations.”
Dr. Hosford’s emails do not give rise to the inference that Defendant had “serious doubts about the truthfulness” of Dr. Hosford’s plagiarism of the article. It is not reasonable to make such an inference from Dr. Hosford’s emails. For this reason, Plaintiff has not sufficiently alleged actual malice….
The court applied the “actual malice” standard for the following reasons:
Because the plaintiff is a professor employed by a public institution, the parties agree that he is a public figure with a greater likelihood of “actual malice.”
