Bickford v. Tektronix, Inc

In Bickford v. Tektronix, Inc., 116 Ore. App. 547, 842 P.2d 432 (1992), the defendant employer held a meeting with employees to explain that the plaintiff, a long-term employee, had been fired because of chronic job performance problems. The plaintiff filed a lawsuit in which he claimed that he had been defamed, and the employer defended on the ground that the communication to the other employees was conditionally privileged. At a hearing on the employer's summary judgment motion, the plaintiff argued that, because his employment record contained positive entries about his work performance, it was necessarily inferable that the employer did not have reasonable grounds to believe that the plaintiff had chronic job performance problems. The Court held that the plaintiff's evidence by itself did not give rise to an inference that the defendant had an improper motive. The Court said that there had to be evidence that is probative of the declarant's state of mind at the time that the statements were made to demonstrate that the statements were made without a reasonable belief as to their truthfulness. Bickford, 116 Ore. App. at 551.