—defamatory statements in letter will likely come to the attention of a third party before the one defamed reads it

In fact, "Massachusetts has expressly rejected the proposition that there can be no publication of an intra-corporate communication, ie, a writing between and among officers and agents of the same corporation in reference to the corporation's business."

Since a given statement, even if libelous, must also be false to give rise to a cause of action, the defendant may assert the statement's truth as an absolute defense to a libel claim.

When a defendant raises an affirmative defense of conditional privilege to defamation, the burden is on the defendant to show the facts that create the privilege.

On the other hand, courts in many states have held that such communications do constitute publication.

A 1943 decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (the "SJC") states, without elaboration, that "[the Actual Malice Statute], by force of which actual malice deprives a defendant of the benefit of this defence in an action for libel does not apply to an action for slander."

We note that other jurisdictions have more broadly treated the oral reading of a written defamatory statement as libel rather than slander.

—a word of `general disparagement'equally discreditable as applied to all persons and not peculiarly harmful in a financial way to "a person in a particular profession is not slanderous

—office manager of a large insurance company took from an unsealed envelope and read aloud to plaintiff letters from insurer's superintendent of agencies addressed to plaintiff discharging him, whether office manager acted within scope of his employment in so communicating fact of discharge to plaintiff was for jury.

Bander was an insurance agent who had testified before a congressional committee on certain practices employed in his agency.