In Dillon v. City of New York (261 AD2d 34 [1st Dept 1999]), the Appellate Division, First Department, held that: Defamation has long been recognized to arise from "the making of a false statement which tends to 'expose the plaintiff to public contempt, ridicule, aversion or disgrace, or induce an evil opinion of him in the minds of right-thinking persons, and to deprive him of their friendly intercourse in society'." The elements are a false statement, published without privilege or authorization to a third party, constituting fault as judged by, at a minimum, a negligence standard, and it must either cause special harm or constitute defamation per se. CPLR 3016 (a) requires that in a defamation action, "the particular words complained of ... be set forth in the complaint." The complaint also must allege the time, place and manner of the false statement and specify to whom it was made. In evaluating whether a cause of action for defamation is successfully pleaded, the words must be construed in the context of the entire statement or publication as a whole, tested against the understanding of the average reader, and if not reasonably susceptible of a defamatory meaning, they are not actionable and cannot be made so by a strained or artificial construction. "Courts 'will not strain' to find defamation 'where none exists'." Loose, figurative or hyperbolic statements, even if deprecating the plaintiff, are not actionable.