Yes, it's something that can be provable as a lie. Such as he or she is a criminal when every background check comes back clean. There have actually been multiple attempts at defamation and they kept ramping it up until it started to work. For the first year of this, my bosses and coworkers in the deep south were told that untrue about my sexual orientation. When that didn't work, they just started making up the worst stuff they could think of and hoping it would stick. I've found that people in general do not need proof to believe anything they hear, especially if they already do not like someone.

So it's IMPOSSIBLE to get people to just tell you what is being said and to give you the opportunity to fight back. At any rate, I'm about to the point of realizing there is no legal recourse for us with the way this was done. If a lawyer can't help unless I have proof, and no one wants to get drawn into a legal proceeding by being honest, then I guess I just have to live with this and hope it goes away?

Something about that seems very wrong to me.