A fabricated assault accusation to police is not just a moral wrong. It can be a six-figure civil liability for the person who made it. That is the practical lesson of Bisogno v. Libertella, a New York case in which a jury found that two people lied to a court officer to get an attorney arrested, and an appellate court affirmed their liability while reducing the money damages to a net $500,000, according to a report on the decision by The Volokh Conspiracy. The figure that matters here is not what the jury first wrote down. It is what survived appeal, and why.
One clarification up front, because it changes how to read the headline number. The court did not award $500,000. A jury awarded far more. The Appellate Division, Second Department, left the finding of liability in place but ordered a remittitur, the procedural tool a court uses to cut a verdict it considers excessive, bringing the damages down to $400,000 in compensatory damages and $100,000 in punitive damages, a combined $500,000, per the Volokh Conspiracy's account of the ruling. The official Second Department slip opinion was not independently available at the time of writing, so the caption, docket, panel, and figures below are drawn from that report and should be confirmed against the official decision.
What happened
The dispute traces to May 9, 2013. As described in the Volokh Conspiracy's summary of the case, the plaintiff, an attorney, appeared at a Richmond County Family Court child-support hearing representing his sister-in-law against John Libertella. John attended with his father, Giovanni Libertella. After the hearing a verbal altercation occurred in the courthouse, and John video-recorded part of it.
According to the same report, the Libertellas then told a court officer that the attorney had punched John and asked that police be called. The attorney was arrested. The District Attorney dismissed the charges in November 2013. He was never convicted of anything arising from that day, and the criminal case ended in his favor.
Two timelines, two very different fights
Cases like this run on two separate tracks, and conflating them is the most common mistake people make when they read a story like this.
The first track is the criminal defense. When an assault charge rests almost entirely on a complaining witness, the defense is built around that witness: inconsistencies, motive to lie, the absence of corroboration, and any physical or video evidence that contradicts the account. Here, that track ended with the prosecutor dismissing the charges in November 2013, as reported by the Volokh Conspiracy.
The second track runs the other direction. Once the criminal case is over and has ended in the accused person's favor, the person who was wrongly accused can become a civil plaintiff, suing the accuser for the harm the false report caused. That is the track that produced the $500,000 figure.
Anatomy of the civil claims
The plaintiff in Bisogno pursued three theories, according to the Volokh Conspiracy's report: defamation per se against both defendants, and false arrest and malicious prosecution against John Libertella. Each has its own elements.
Defamation per se. Under New York law, falsely charging someone with a serious crime is one of the recognized categories of defamation per se, which means damages are presumed and the plaintiff does not have to prove specific monetary loss, as explained in the New York Litigation Guide chapter on defamation per se. A false claim that someone committed a punch-and-assault to a court officer fits squarely in that category, which is why both defendants faced this claim, per the Volokh Conspiracy account.
Malicious prosecution. New York requires a plaintiff to prove four things: that a criminal proceeding was commenced or continued, that it terminated in the accused person's favor, that there was no probable cause for the proceeding, and that the defendant acted with actual malice, as set out in the New York Litigation Guide chapter on malicious prosecution. The November 2013 dismissal supplied the favorable-termination element here, per the Volokh Conspiracy account.
False arrest. The third claim targeted the arrest itself. The legal question, discussed below, is when a private citizen who talks to police becomes legally responsible for the arrest that follows.
The pivotal legal line: information versus procurement
This is the heart of the case and the part most worth understanding. Reporting a crime to the police, even mistakenly, does not by itself make a civilian liable for what the police do next. As the Volokh Conspiracy explains in its discussion of the court's reasoning, a civilian who merely furnishes information to law enforcement, leaving the officers to exercise their own independent judgment, is generally not liable for false arrest or malicious prosecution.
Liability attaches only when the civilian crosses a line: giving advice or encouragement, importuning the authorities to act, or, for false arrest, affirmatively inducing the arrest with what the court described as active, officious and undue zeal, such that the officer is not acting of their own volition, again per the Volokh Conspiracy's summary of the decision.
According to that report, the record in Bisogno showed the plaintiff would not have been arrested but for the defendants' false statements and John's active insistence that the police arrest him. That is the bridge between a false report and civil liability: not a mistaken call to police, but a fabricated accusation pushed with enough force that the officer was effectively carrying out the accuser's demand.
Damages reality check
Here is the part of the story that headlines tend to flatten. The jury did not award $500,000. According to the Volokh Conspiracy's report, the jury found for the plaintiff on every cause of action submitted and awarded roughly $10 million in compensatory damages plus $250,000 in punitive damages.
The Appellate Division, Second Department, left liability intact but found the damages excessive and ordered a remittitur, reducing the award to $400,000 compensatory and $100,000 punitive, $500,000 in total, conditioned on the plaintiff stipulating to the reduced figure or facing a new trial on damages, per the same report. The panel was reported to include Justices Francesca E. Connolly, Paul Wooten, Helen Voutsinas, and James P. McCormack, in a matter docketed as No. 2023-02959 and decided around March 2026, according to the Volokh Conspiracy's reporting.
Remittitur is routine appellate hygiene. A verdict can be legally sound on liability and still be cut sharply on damages if an appeals court concludes the dollar figure deviates materially from what is reasonable compensation. Winning damages in practice often means a long fight, a large jury number, and a much smaller check after appeal.
The defense-lawyer playbook for an invented accusation
For someone facing a charge that rests on a single accuser, the criminal-defense strategy and the later civil claim are connected. The work that beats the charge also builds the civil case.
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Attack the complainant's credibility. Prior false-report findings, recanted or inconsistent statements, and identifiable motive to lie are the core of defending a complaining-witness case.
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Preserve exculpatory evidence immediately. Recordings, surveillance footage, and witness contact information disappear fast. In Bisogno, video of the encounter existed, recorded by the accuser himself, according to the Volokh Conspiracy's account.
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Push for a clean, favorable termination. A dismissal or acquittal is not only the goal of the criminal case, it is a required element of a later malicious-prosecution claim, as the New York Litigation Guide sets out.
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Document everything for the civil track. Arrest records, the timeline, and any statements by the accuser are the raw material a civil attorney will need later.
What a wrongly accused person should actually do
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Do not try to litigate the truth at the scene. Get a lawyer before giving statements.
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Identify and preserve every recording and witness while memories and footage still exist.
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Make the favorable termination of the criminal case explicit in the record, because it matters later.
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Consult civil counsel early. The defamation, false arrest, and malicious-prosecution clocks do not wait for you to feel ready.
Caveats and limits
This outcome is powerful but narrow. It is New York law, decided by the Second Department, and other states frame false arrest and malicious prosecution differently. The favorable-termination requirement is a real gate: if a criminal case ends in a way that is not clearly in the accused person's favor, a malicious-prosecution claim may fail before it starts, per the elements described in the New York Litigation Guide. Probable cause is a defense, and an accuser who merely passed along information that police independently acted on is generally protected, as the Volokh Conspiracy notes in describing the civilian-complainant rule. Statute-of-limitations exposure can quietly end a strong case. And, as noted above, the case-specific details here come from a secondary report of the decision and should be verified against the official Second Department opinion.
The signal, and its limits
The broader message from Bisogno v. Libertella is not that every false police report ends in a half-million-dollar judgment. It is that a fabricated accusation of a serious crime, pushed actively enough that police effectively act on the accuser's demand, can convert into defamation per se, false arrest, and malicious prosecution liability once the criminal case ends in the accused person's favor, according to the Volokh Conspiracy's report. The damages may be cut on appeal. The liability, in the right case, sticks.
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