The right of reputation refers to the specific personality rights enjoyed by natural persons, legal persons, and non legal person organizations in accordance with the law, based on their social evaluation of their own attributes and values, and reflects the personality interests of civil subjects. If one party reports the situation to the petition department through legal channels and the relevant department verifies that there are no petition issues, does this petition behavior infringe on the other party's reputation? The People's Court of Enshi City, Hubei Province, tried a case involving reputation rights in the first instance and rejected the original application. Recently, the second instance court upheld the original judgment.

The plaintiff Zhang and the defendant Li were originally lovers, but later Li proposed to break up. Afterwards, Zhang demanded that Li return a total of 30000 yuan in money transferred and consumed during their relationship, and the two parties had an argument on WeChat. In September 2025, Li filed a petition with a certain petition bureau on the grounds of Zhang's extortion and sexual harassment. After investigation by relevant departments, it was found that Zhang did not engage in extortion, substantive harassment, or other behaviors, and the two of them had a personal emotional dispute.

Zhang believes that the report materials submitted by Li have been widely circulated in his workplace, and he has been summoned and interviewed by relevant departments multiple times, which has damaged his reputation. Therefore, he sued Li to the court, demanding that he publicly apologize in the newspaper and compensate for his mental damages.

After the court's trial, it was found that whether the infringement of reputation rights was established should be strictly examined in accordance with the constituent elements stipulated in Article 1024 of the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China, namely whether the perpetrator had committed acts of insult, defamation or other defamation that damaged reputation, whether the act was directed towards a specific subject, whether it was public, and whether it led to an objective decrease in the victim's social evaluation.

In this case, due to emotional and economic disputes with Zhang, Li reported the situation to the petition department through legal channels. He defined the expenses returned to Zhang during their relationship as extortion, and defined Zhang's argument with him as spreading rumors and sexual harassment, which is more of a subjective definition error. The relevant facts are not fabricated out of thin air, nor are they fabricated out of thin air. The Regulations on Petition Work clearly stipulate that the handling of petition matters should protect the privacy of petitioners, and relevant materials should only be circulated within the functional departments with the authority to handle them, and should not be disclosed to the public. The scope of the circulation of petition materials proposed by Li is limited to the internal affairs of the receiving department, discipline inspection commission, public security organs, and other authorized agencies, which is a necessary work circulation in the operation of the petition system. It is completely different in nature from the act of actively spreading and disseminating information to unspecified members of the public. The leaders and disciplinary inspection staff of Zhang's unit became aware of the reported content due to fulfilling their statutory duties such as receiving visits, investigations, and interviews, which was a matter of power and not due to Li actively disseminating it to the public. Zhang's summons and interviews were due to the relevant authorities initiating verification procedures on the petition clues in accordance with the law. This is a procedural behavior of the public power organs fulfilling their duties and cannot be directly equated with an objective decrease in their social evaluation. Zhang himself failed to provide evidence to prove that Li had engaged in inappropriate behavior of spreading information to the public, nor did he provide evidence to prove the objective facts and consequences of his own reputation damage. Therefore, his claim of infringement of reputation rights has no factual basis.

In summary, the court ruled in accordance with the law to reject Zhang's lawsuit request. Zhang refused to accept the judgment and appealed. The second instance court rejected the appeal and upheld the original judgment in accordance with the law.

This article is transferred from the WeChat official account "Shandong Gaofa". Thank you!