7/21 – A Delaware Superior Court judge dismissed all six defamation claims brought by UnitedHealth Group against The Guardian, concluding that the newspaper’s reporting was either substantially true or otherwise protected by the First Amendment. The lawsuit arose from a May 2025 Guardian investigation alleging that UnitedHealth: secretly paid bonuses to nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers of Medicare Advantage residents; incentivized facilities to keep patients out of hospitals to reduce costs; and pressured clinicians regarding end-of-life decisions for some patients. In dismissing UnitedHealth’s claims, the court held that the challenged statements were substantially true, and that the court would not “cherry pick” language in the article rather than reading the article as a whole. The court also held that the Guardian was not required to publish facts that might have cast UnitedHealth in a more favorable light as long as its reporting was not materially false.