Posted on 01/04/2005 1:18:21 PM PST by freepatriot32
MINNEAPOLIS — Lots of newspapers lose lawsuits. But the $625,000 jury verdict against a small suburban newspaper has gotten the attention of media-watchers.
The Chanhassen Villager was hauled into court over an editorial about an elected official — the sort of thing where newspapers usually have wide latitude.
“This would probably bankrupt two-thirds of the newspapers in the state of Minnesota,” said Mark Anfinson, attorney for the chain of small papers sto which the Villager belongs and for many other smaller papers. Attorneys for the Villager aren’t claiming that the Villager itself is in jeopardy.
Media attorney Paul Hannah, who represented the Villager at the trial, said the jury award was much higher than other recent comparable cases and that it showed the danger of juries picking numbers out of the air.
“They asked the judge if there were any guidelines,” he said, “and the answer is: No, there are not.”
Julianne Ortman, a Republican state senator from Chanhassen who represented the plaintiff, said the press does a great service — but this case showed there were limits.
“This doesn’t open any floodgates,” she said. “It is almost impossible to find the kind of proof we found of malice on an editor’s part. This is not happening all over Minnesota.”
Plaintiff Tom Workman, a former legislator who now serves on the Carver County board, said this was the first time he had sued. He said the case was not about the right of the press to criticize government officials, but about the price those officials must pay to run for office.
The lawsuit came after the Villager suggested in an editorial that Workman might have plotted to get Carver County’s veteran administrator fired because of a grudge. The grudge supposedly arose out of a lawsuit against him in which the county had prevailed.
But the editorial contained factual errors, and jurors found that the former editor of the paper acted with “deliberate disregard” when they awarded Workman his damages. Ortman said a letter to the editor published on the same page as the editorial contained an accurate version of what the Villager got wrong.
The outcome was “very surprising” given the protection that courts extend to newspapers editorializing about public officials, said David Heller, a staff attorney at the Media Law Resource Center in New York, which tracks such cases nationally.
“The burden you have to meet is very high,” he said. “Either the journalist has to have made up blatant lies or the truth was almost staring him in the face and he just wouldn’t pay heed. It’s more than even extreme sloppiness.”
Eric Robinson, a staff attorney for the Resource Center, said that since 1980 nearly half of all such awards have been stripped back. He said the median final outcome for public officials and public figures is $87,500, versus initial awards of $380,000.
Marilyn Hamm, a great-grandmother who produces the 10,000-circulation Blaine Banner at home, said the verdict gave her no reason to change.
“I always make sure what I’ve got is correct,” she said, and anything with a sting to it goes “right off to Mark (Anfinson)” for review before it’s published.
She recalled an instance years ago when she saw a city official ask council members for $10,000 on top of his normal salary. She called a former editor of one of the metro dailies for advice, and was told, “If you don’t tell, who will?”
ping
One down.
One million to go.
good point.......this could be a great precident for suing teh crap out of SeeBS.......i'm not a lawyer though so I'd like to hear what others think.......This stuff usually doesn't pan out
Yeah. til now the only greedy corporations who could freely break the law and destroy peoples' lives were newspapers. heh-heh.
“Either the journalist has to have made up blatant lies or the truth was almost staring him in the face and he just wouldn’t pay heed. It’s more than even extreme sloppiness.”
And there must be ACTUAL malice (assuming this pol was a public figure).
if I remember the definition from my college days, this is a definite libel case, even if it was an editorial about a Public official. Libel is a defamatory falsehood published to a third party, causing social or economic harm. This certainly smacks of libel to me. Generally there are less stringent guidelines for judging libelous statements about public officials, since they in theory have given up some of their privacy/rights by making themselves known in public. The crux of the jury decision probably came down to the fact that the editorial page had printed the incorrect version of events editorial right alongside a conflicting "correct" report. The layout of the page made it obvious that the editorial was a thinly veiled political hack-job.
That amount is ridiculous. I am guessing it will be reduced upon appeal.
BUSTED!
They probably won't see the entire $600k+. but it'll be in the low six figures even after being knocked down on appeal.
Who's next?
probably not many more media establishments. CBS/MemoGate won't get them sued for libel/defamation. You can pretty much say anything you want about the President. Hustler Inc v. Falwell's decision in front of the supreme court pretty much means that the more "public" an official is, the more you can say about him and get away with it. Same goes for corporations as well. ABC News vs. Food Lion, for instance.
This does not mean you are free to slander someone or perpetuate fraud.
Wanna publish fiction? Make sure it is labeled as such.
bump for later, this is the best news I've heard in a LONG time!!!
This would be GREAT to use against the corrupt media outlets such as DNCBS...
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CONCLUSION OF THOMAS JEFERSON'S 2ND INAUGURAL ADDRESS IN 1804
"During this course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety. They might, indeed, have been corrected by the wholesome punishments reserved to and provided by the laws of the several States against falsehood and defamation, but public duties more urgent press on the time of public servants, and the offenders have therefore been left to find their punishment in the public indignation.
Nor was it uninteresting to the world that an experiment should be fairly and fully made, whether freedom of discussion, unaided by power, is not sufficient for the propagation and protection of truth—whether a government conducting itself in the true spirit of its constitution, with zeal and purity, and doing no act which it would be unwilling the whole world should witness, can be written down by falsehood and defamation. The experiment has been tried; you have witnessed the scene; our fellow-citizens looked on, cool and collected; they saw the latent source from which these outrages proceeded; they gathered around their public functionaries, and when the Constitution called them to the decision by suffrage, they pronounced their verdict, honorable to those who had served them and consolatory to the friend of man who believes that he may be trusted with the control of his own affairs.
No inference is here intended that the laws provided by the States against false and defamatory publications should not be enforced; he who has time renders a service to public morals and public tranquillity in reforming these abuses by the salutary coercions of the law; but the experiment is noted to prove that, since truth and reason have maintained their ground against false opinions in league with false facts, the press, confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint; the public judgment will correct false reasoning and opinions on a full hearing of all parties; and no other definite line can be drawn between the inestimable liberty of the press and its demoralizing licentiousness. If there be still improprieties which this rule would not restrain, its supplement must be sought in the censorship of public opinion.
BTW, I think a hefty fine is the least they can impose. I'd like to see a little jail time go with it.
Watch some ACLU lawyers try to come after blogs that they don't like. Even if they don't win the case, they can destroy you with court and lawyer costs to defend yourself.
Obviously, at least to this judge, the newspaper acted with malice, or with a wanton and willful disregard for truth.
Failure to check the facts, by itself, is not grounds for a decision against the defendant. Or Dan Rather would be washing car windows at a Manhattan stop light.
Very interesting, putting Jefferson's words in here. Jefferson had been accused in the press by a former supporter of having sex with black slave women at Monticello. Now this was unlikely because the two women were his wife's half-sisters and there were witnessed liaisons between Jefferson's nephews and the women. But Jefferson wouldn't sue, leaving the false accusations to die on the vine, until ... the early 1970s when a fiction writer imagined that Jefferson did have sex with the women. Since then, with Jefferson and his contemporaries in their graves with no chance to defend themselves, a new generation has come to believe what people at the time knew to be false.
BTW, I have little doubt that after suing the county, the new commissioner had a grudge against the administrator and got him fired. Sure seems like a minor error, which side sued which, to base a $625,000 judgment.
I'd like to see Stoltz pursue a suit against Workman and the board. He'll probably get a settlement and slink away while the newspaper that tried to stand up for him gets hammered.
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