A Detroit Lions fan has filed a $100 million defamation lawsuit naming DK Metcalf, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and several other parties. The dollar figure alone is eye-catching, but the real question is whether the legal argument behind it has any real substance.

That’s not something I’m qualified to judge on my own, so I turned to my former college roommate and longtime friend Eric Donica, who is a licensed attorney practicing in Tennessee, to help provide some clarity.

Eric is not involved in the case in any professional capacity, and this discussion isn’t meant to take sides or determine fault. The goal is to walk through the fundamentals: what someone must prove in a defamation claim, how realistic a nine-figure damages demand actually is, and what it means when multiple defendants are included in a single lawsuit.

This is meant strictly as an educational overview of how defamation cases generally work from a legal standpoint, and I figured others might appreciate hearing that explanation directly from a practicing lawyer.

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