Erosion of a dental specialist's referral network: an economic loss template for cyber-defamation

Cyber-defamation of physicians is increasingly common and the viral capability of the internet entails that cyber-defamation carries great potential for sizable professional harm. Accordingly, an important research question involves how to determine the business losses associated with internet libel of medical specialists. Because of the relative newness of these cases, and the nascent state of the literature, a framework for assessing damages is posited through the dissemination of a related case study; namely, the unravelling of a dental-specialty partnership in which a junior associate departs and the incumbent specialist subsequently experiences an economic contraction. The key insight linking the approaches is that cyber-defamation, like an unraveled partnership, will manifest itself in the erosion of patient referrals and associated procedures. Thus, while the antecedent for the economic contraction differs, the techniques forwarded in this study's loss assessment are utilised in establishing an approach for estimating cyber-defamation damages.