article_snippet.sent: Brian Stelter: Fraternity to 'pursue all available legal action
article_snippet.sent: Can UVA, Phi Kappa Psi or any of the other fraternities on campus sue for defamation?
article_snippet.sent: The individual members of the fraternity will likely be considered private individuals, and not public figures; the latter have a harder time proving defamation.
article_snippet.sent: The university is a public university, and therefore The university is a governmental entity.
article_snippet.sent: Now the fraternities, starting with Phi Kappa Psi.
article_snippet.sent: A fraternity is not an individual, but a group.
article_snippet.sent: Phi Kappa Psi would likely argue that the "small group" exception fits it perfectly: Even if the individual members were not identified by name, the defamatory story has been imputed directly to individual members, who have suffered by the individual members association with a group.
article_snippet.sent: On the other hand, Rolling Stone's lawyers would likely argue that a group is so large and fluid (after all, the membership changes somewhat every year), that even though the fraternity's reputation is tarnished, the individual members have suffered no individualized injury.
article_snippet.sent: As for the other fraternities on campus but not implicated in the defamatory story, that's likely a group that moves from the small category to large, and the members of Greek life generally will have a harder time bringing a lawsuit.
article_snippet.sent: The university won't be able to sue, but if the members of the fraternity can get past some of the preliminary hurdles of a defamation claim, and the members of the fraternity can make a tangible case for damages, then this could be one of those rare successful defamation cases.