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You can say that, but if he finds out, you can get sued for defamation. That's why most companies, when you ask for a reference, will not say anything beyond yo

You can say that, but if he finds out, you can get sued for defamation. That's why most companies, when you ask for a reference, will not say anything beyond your dates of employment and maybe the names of the projects you were working on.

tptacek 9y ago
In reality, the majority of destructive rumors take the form of "Bob was impossible to work with", not "Bob sexually assaulted Avery". Meanwhile: a bogus accusation of rape is far more actionable than a bogus accusation of being an asshole; if you actually worked with Bob at all, you probably can't be sued for that at all, since things that can be construed as opinions cannot be the basis of a valid defamation claim. Unlike sexual assault, which, as a crime, is probably defamatory per se. So relative to the set of all possible destruct rumors, allegations of sexual assault stand as outliers for how uniquely protected the accused actually are.