An alleged defaming remark on Facebook accuses a woman to have killed her child while drunk. It resulted to a lawsuit settlement amounting to $500,000, but the defendant tells that the comment was all but "misplaced."
Coming from Ashville, Davyne Dial sued Jacquelyn Hammond over a comment in Facebook on Nov. 5, 2015. The two have been pitting against each other before over gaining control on a low-wattage radio station WPVM. Hammond's comment about Dial killing her child is said to have resulted to defamation and inflicted emotional distress.
The Buncombe County Superior Court judge awarded Dial, $250,000 for actual damages and $250,000 for punitive damages. The stunning amount of $500,000 settlement is quite impossible to be paid, as emotional damages doesn't even account for insurance backing or sort of like that, according to Michael D. Green, professor of Wake Forest University School of Law, as reported by USA Today.
As for Dial, she didn't have any further comment about the case's result other than confirm the $500,000 awarded settlement. But Dial admits that she lost her son in 1976 because of being accidentally shot by another boy who was playing with a gun. The experience was too painful for Dial that when Hammond wrote the comment "I didn't get drunk and kill my kid," as if implying the statement as Dial's words, the painful memories of losing her son was relived on her emotions.
On a telephone interview with Citizen-Times, Dial said that she didn't know that Hammond knew about the loss of her son, so she was really surprised about the comment. In order for Dial to defend herself from being accused of killing her son, she needed to get back to where everything started - gathering evidences and some documents to prove her innocence. The process involved emotions and a damage to her reputation.
