The punishment for slander is almost always civil: the person who made the false spoken statement pays money to the person they harmed. Compensatory damages cover the actual losses and emotional harm, and in the worst cases a jury adds punitive damages meant to punish the speaker and deter others. A court can also order the defendant to stop repeating the statement. A dozen or so states keep criminal defamation statutes on the books, but prosecutions are uncommon and penalties, when imposed, usually mean a fine rather than jail. What a defendant ultimately pays turns on what was said, how far it spread, the speaker’s state of mind, and how much provable harm followed.
Compensatory Damages
The core consequence of slander is compensatory damages, which try to put the victim back where they stood before the false statement. These split into two categories.
Special damages cover economic losses the plaintiff can document: lost wages after a firing, lost revenue after customers walked away, canceled contracts. Proof matters here. A business owner who lost $30,000 in revenue after a competitor falsely told suppliers the business was committing fraud would need sales records showing the decline and evidence tying it to the false statement. Vague claims about lost opportunities without financial backup won’t survive.
General damages address the harder-to-measure harm: emotional distress, anxiety, humiliation, damage to standing in the community. Courts look at how widely the statement spread, how believable it was, and whether the reputational damage is likely to be permanent. A false accusation whispered to one person at a dinner produces a different award than the same lie broadcast to hundreds. Juries have wide discretion, and awards can range from a few thousand dollars to well into six figures when the emotional toll is severe and well-documented.
Fault level shapes what the plaintiff can collect. Under Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., a private plaintiff who proves only negligence is limited to compensation for actual injury.1Cornell Law Institute. Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. Public officials and public figures have to meet the higher “actual malice” standard from New York Times Co. v. Sullivan before they can recover anything at all.2Justia. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan
When Harm Is Presumed: Slander Per Se
Ordinary slander requires the plaintiff to prove specific financial harm, which can be difficult. Slander per se removes that requirement for four categories of statements courts consider inherently destructive:
- Falsely accusing someone of a crime.
- Falsely claiming someone has a serious contagious or stigmatizing disease.
- Falsely attacking someone’s competence or integrity in their trade, business, or profession.
- Falsely accusing someone of unchastity or serious sexual misconduct.
When a statement falls into one of these categories, the plaintiff can win without producing a receipt or payroll record. The jury sets the dollar figure based on the circumstances, and awards range from a nominal dollar to substantial sums depending on how widely the statement circulated and how damaging the specific accusation was. Falsely telling a hospital board that a surgeon is incompetent carries an obvious presumed harm even if the surgeon hasn’t yet lost a patient.
Punitive Damages
Compensatory damages make the victim whole. Punitive damages exist to punish the defendant and deter others, and courts reserve them for the worst behavior.
The threshold depends on the plaintiff. Public figures already have to prove actual malice to win at all, so punitive damages flow from the same proof. For private plaintiffs, the Supreme Court held in Gertz that states cannot award punitive damages unless the plaintiff proves the defendant knew the statement was false or recklessly disregarded whether it was true.1Cornell Law Institute. Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. Simple negligence gets compensatory damages. Punitive damages require something closer to deliberate wrongdoing.
The Constitution puts a ceiling on how high those awards can climb. The Supreme Court has held that punitive damages exceeding a single-digit ratio to compensatory damages will rarely satisfy due process.3Justia. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. v. Campbell If a jury awards $50,000 in compensatory damages, a punitive award of $150,000 would likely stand. An award of $5 million against the same baseline would face serious constitutional challenge. Courts also consider the defendant’s wealth: a $10,000 penalty means nothing to a billion-dollar corporation but could devastate an individual.
Insurance Usually Won’t Cover Punitive Damages
Some homeowners’ and umbrella policies cover compensatory damages from defamation claims. Punitive damages are a different story. Many states prohibit insurance coverage for punitive damages on public policy grounds: punishment that an insurer absorbs isn’t punishment. If you’re counting on an umbrella policy to bail you out after deliberately spreading lies, you are likely on your own for the punitive portion.
Court Orders Telling the Defendant to Stop
Money isn’t always enough, especially when a defendant keeps repeating the same lies. Courts can issue injunctions ordering the defendant to stop making specific statements already proven defamatory. Violating an injunction exposes the defendant to contempt of court, which can bring additional fines or even jail time.
There is a constitutional limit here. The First Amendment’s prohibition on prior restraint makes courts cautious about ordering people not to speak. Most courts will allow an injunction requiring a defendant to take down past statements already adjudicated as defamatory, but several have refused to prohibit future speech, even repetition of the same proven falsehood. The concern is that a broadly worded order could sweep in protected speech. Any injunction that survives has to be narrowly drafted and based on a full adversarial hearing, not a preliminary ruling.
Court-ordered apologies are even more fraught. Compelling someone to say words they don’t believe raises compelled-speech concerns under the First Amendment. In practice, public apologies almost always come out of settlement negotiations, with the defendant agreeing to a retraction in exchange for reduced financial exposure.
Criminal Penalties
About a dozen states still have criminal defamation statutes, though prosecutions are uncommon and the laws face ongoing constitutional challenges. The Supreme Court imposed significant restrictions on criminal defamation in the 1960s without striking the statutes down, and lower courts have continued chipping away at them.
Where criminal defamation is prosecuted, it’s typically classified as a misdemeanor. Penalties can include fines ranging from a few hundred to several thousand dollars and jail sentences of up to a year, though incarceration for spoken defamation is exceptionally rare. A conviction also creates a permanent record, with collateral consequences for employment, housing, and immigration status that outlast the sentence.
The broader trend is toward fewer criminal prosecutions, not more. Civil remedies handle most disputes, and First Amendment advocates argue that criminal penalties for speech chill legitimate expression. Some observers note that prosecutions have ticked upward in the context of online speech, particularly when the targets are law enforcement or public officials. Anyone facing a criminal defamation charge needs a criminal defense attorney, not just a defamation litigator.
What Can Reduce or Eliminate the Punishment
A Timely Retraction
Roughly half the states have retraction statutes that let a defendant limit exposure by issuing a prompt correction. The specifics vary, but the general framework is the same: if the victim demands a retraction and the defendant publishes one promptly and conspicuously, the plaintiff’s recovery is capped at special (economic) damages. Punitive and presumed damages come off the table.
These laws typically require the plaintiff to send a written demand within a short window after discovering the statement, and the defendant usually has a few weeks to publish a correction in the same medium where the original ran. A retraction buried in fine print at the bottom of a webpage won’t satisfy the requirement if the slander reached a broad audience. The correction has to be roughly as visible as the lie. Retractions don’t help, however, when the defendant acted with actual malice. If you knew the statement was false when you said it, a belated correction won’t shield you from the full range of damages.
Complete Defenses
Several defenses can defeat a slander claim outright, meaning no damages at all.
Truth is an absolute defense. If the statement is substantially true, the claim fails no matter how much damage it caused. Minor inaccuracies don’t turn a true statement into a defamatory one; what matters is whether the overall thrust is accurate. In many states the defendant bears the burden of proving truth, but when the plaintiff is a public figure or the statement involves a matter of public concern, the plaintiff must prove falsity.2Justia. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan
Pure opinion is not actionable because it can’t be proven true or false. “I think that restaurant is terrible” is opinion. “That restaurant failed its health inspection” is a factual claim. The Supreme Court held in Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co. that there is no blanket exemption for anything labeled “opinion”; if an opinion reasonably implies an underlying false factual assertion, it can still be actionable.4Cornell Law Institute. Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co.
Privilege shields certain contexts. Absolute privilege covers statements made during judicial proceedings, legislative debate, and certain official government functions. Qualified privilege covers situations where the speaker has a legitimate reason to share information and the audience a legitimate reason to receive it, such as a former employer giving a job reference. Qualified privilege can be defeated by proof of malice or by showing the speaker exceeded the privilege.
Anti-SLAPP Motions
Most states have anti-SLAPP statutes that let a defendant file an early motion to dismiss a meritless defamation suit before expensive discovery begins. If the motion succeeds, the plaintiff’s case ends and the plaintiff typically pays the defendant’s attorney fees and costs. Anti-SLAPP laws don’t protect people who actually committed slander; they protect people dragged into court over speech on matters of public concern. Filing a weak slander case in a state with a strong anti-SLAPP law can turn the plaintiff into the one writing a check.
Tax Consequences for the Winner
Winning a slander case comes with an unpleasant surprise at tax time. Under federal tax law, damages for defamation are generally taxable income because they don’t arise from physical injury or physical sickness.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 104 – Compensation for Injuries or Sickness The IRS treats emotional distress damages from non-physical injuries, including defamation and humiliation, as gross income.6Internal Revenue Service. Tax Implications of Settlements and Judgments Punitive damages are always taxable, regardless of the underlying claim.
Attorney fees add another wrinkle. Only employment, civil rights, and certain whistleblower claims qualify for the “above-the-line” deduction that lets plaintiffs subtract attorney fees from taxable recovery. Defamation cases don’t qualify. Before 2018, plaintiffs could claim legal fees as a miscellaneous itemized deduction, but the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act suspended that deduction for tax years 2018 through 2025.7Congressional Research Service. Expiring Provisions of P.L. 115-97 (the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act) The suspension lifts after 2025, so the miscellaneous itemized deduction should return in 2026, with significant limitations including the alternative minimum tax. A plaintiff who wins a $200,000 defamation judgment and pays $80,000 in attorney fees could owe taxes on the full $200,000 if the fees can’t be effectively deducted. Talking to a tax professional before accepting a settlement is worth the cost.