Case Title: Kelly v. Arrington

Citation: 624 So. 2d 546

Docket Number: 1920145

State: alabama

Court: Alabama Supreme Court

Date: 1993-07-23T00:00:00Z

Document:
624 So. 2d 546 (1993)
Leon F. "Buddy" KELLY, Jr.
v.
Richard ARRINGTON.
1920145.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
July 23, 1993.
*547 Stephen D. Heninger of Heninger, Burge & Vargo, Birmingham, for appellant.
Joe R. Whatley, Jr. and Samuel H. Heldman of Cooper, Mitch, Crawford, Kuykendall & Whatley, Donald V. Watkins, and Kenneth L. Thomas of Thomas, Means & Gillis, Birmingham, for appellee.
PER CURIAM.
The sole issue presented by this appeal is whether statements made by the mayor of Birmingham about an assistant United States attorney could reasonably be understood by the average layperson as defamatory; if so, then the defendant's summary judgment in this defamation action must be reversed.
The defendant, Richard Arrington, is the mayor of the City of Birmingham. The plaintiff, Leon F. "Buddy" Kelly, Jr., is an assistant United States attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. Kelly sued Arrington in the Circuit Court of Shelby County, but his case was subsequently transferred to Jefferson County.[1] Arrington subsequently moved for a summary judgment, arguing that, as a matter of law, his statements were not defamatory. The court granted the motion. Kelly appeals. We affirm.
Mayor Arrington wrote and published a column entitled "Mayor's Comments: Some Post Election Observations," on October 17, 1991, in the Birmingham Times. The article was republished in the Birmingham News/Birmingham Post-Herald on Saturday, October 19, 1991, and again in the Birmingham News on October 21, 1991. The portion of the article at issue reads as follows:
Kelly contends that these statements were defamatory because, Kelly says, in them Arrington *548 accused Kelly of being in collusion with federal agents and private individuals to illegally solicit and publish information to incriminate Arrington during his re-election campaign for mayor. Kelly argues that they relate directly to his professional and personal integrity and ethics and that "[t]he crux of this lawsuit is that defendant has jeopardized plaintiff's livelihood and career." Kelly states that "[a] United States Attorney can be disciplined or terminated for even discussing the subject of an investigation," and that "[Arrington's] charges are even more serious because [Arrington] charged [him] with leaking information to influence and interfere with a municipal election." Kelly says that Arrington's statements could be reasonably understood by the average layperson as defamatory and, therefore, that they were actionable.
Rule 56, A.R.Civ.P., sets forth a two-tiered standard for entering a summary judgment. The rule requires the trial court to determine (1) that there is no genuine issue of material fact and (2) that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law. The burdens placed on the moving party by this rule have been stated by the Court as follows:
Berner v. Caldwell, 543 So. 2d 686, 688 (Ala. 1989) (quoting Schoen v. Gullege, 481 So. 2d 1094 (Ala.1985)).
The standard of review applicable to a summary judgment is the same as the standard for granting the motion, that is, we must determine whether there was a genuine issue of material fact and, if not, whether the movant was entitled to a judgment as a matter of law. Our review is further subject to the caveat that this Court must review the record in a light most favorable to the nonmovant and resolve all reasonable doubts against the movant. Harrell v. Reynolds Metals Co., 495 So. 2d 1381 (Ala.1986). See also Hanners v. Balfour Guthrie, Inc., 564 So. 2d 412 (Ala.1990).
We now address whether the statements could have been understood as defamatory. Whether a communication is reasonably capable of a defamatory meaning is a question of law. Camp v. Yeager, 601 So. 2d 924, 926 (Ala.1992), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 113 S. Ct. 967, 122 L. Ed. 2d 122 (1993); Harris v. School Annual Publishing Co., 466 So. 2d 963, 964 (Ala.1985). "[I]f the communication is not reasonably capable of a defamatory meaning, there is no issue of fact, and summary judgment is proper." Harris, 466 So. 2d  at 964-65. "However, if the trial court finds that the statement is reasonably capable of a defamatory meaning, `it is then for the jury to say whether [the statement was] in fact so understood.'" Camp, 601 So. 2d  at 927, quoting W. Page Keeton, et al., Prosser and Keeton on Torts, § 111, at 781 (5th ed. 1984).
The test to factually determine the defamatory nature of a statement was described in Loveless v. Graddick, 295 Ala. 142, 148, 325 So. 2d 137, 142 (1975), as follows:
In addition, this Court has set out the following principle for determining whether a printed statement was defamatory:
McGraw v. Thomason, 265 Ala. 635, 639, 93 So. 2d 741, 744 (1957).
If the words employed in the allegedly defamatory publication are understood to impute dishonesty or corruption to an individual, they are actionable. Gray v. WALA-TV, 384 So. 2d 1062, 1065 (Ala.1980). Words are defamatory per se if they directly tend to prejudice anyone in his office, profession, trade, or business, or in any lawful employment by which he may gain his livelihood. Id.
In an affidavit filed in opposition to the motion for summary judgment, Kelly said, in part:
Kelly summarizes his argument about the defamatory nature of the statement as follows:
Arrington summarizes his argument, in his brief, as follows:
We are persuaded that the statements made by Mayor Arrington could not reasonably *551 be understood by the average layperson as having a defamatory meaning; therefore, no material issue of fact was presented. Consequently, the summary judgment was appropriate.
Based on the foregoing, the judgment of the trial court is due to be affirmed.
AFFIRMED.
HORNSBY, C.J., and ADAMS, STEAGALL, KENNEDY and INGRAM, JJ., concur.
MADDOX, J., concurs in the result.
MADDOX, Justice (concurring in the result).
Although I concur in the affirmance of the summary judgment, it is not because "the statements ... could not reasonably be understood by the average layperson as having a defamatory meaning," but because of the holding in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S. Ct. 710, 11 L. Ed. 2d 686 (1964), a case decided "against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks upon government and public officials." 376 U.S.  at 270, 84 S. Ct.  at 721. See Camp v. Yeager, 601 So. 2d 924 (Ala.1992), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 113 S. Ct. 967, 122 L. Ed. 2d 122 (1993), a case in which the alleged defamatory statement was made about a public official during a political campaign and may have been understood as accusing the official of misconduct in office while he was a member of the Public Service Commission. In a dissenting opinion in that case, I said that "[c]onsidering the Supreme Court's review in New York Times of the history of the First Amendment, it is clear to me that the Court came ever so close to holding that political speech, even speech that is false and defamatory ... has absolute protection under the First Amendment" (emphasis original), 601 So. 2d  at 931, and I included the following quote from New York Times:
601 So. 2d  at 901 (quoting 376 U.S. 254, 271, 84 S. Ct. 710, 721, quoting from Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 310, 60 S. Ct. 900, 906, 84 L. Ed. 1213 (1940) (emphasis added in my dissent in Camp)).[2]
That the newspaper article here in dispute was capable of a defamatory meaning seems clear. In the article, Arrington accused Kelly, an assistant United States attorney, of being in collusion with federal agents and private individuals to illegally solicit and publish information to incriminate the mayor, and also, within the same article, the mayor accused Kelly of ongoing efforts to influence and maliciously interfere with his mayoral campaign. In his concluding comments, the mayor accused Kelly of "unethical" conduct; if that statement was true, Kelly could have been disciplined or his employment terminated, under federal law.
The statements in this article, therefore, are not substantially different from the statement made by the defendant in Camp v. Yeager, in which a majority of this Court, applying the test of Loveless v. Graddick, 295 Ala. 142, 325 So. 2d 137 (1975), reversed a summary judgment for the defendant. I think that the Court is being inconsistent, but I concur in the result.
[1]  Arrington asked the Shelby Circuit Court to dismiss for lack of venue or, in the alternative, to transfer the action. His motion was denied, but on Arrington's petition, this Court issued a writ of mandamus requiring the transfer to Jefferson County. Ex parte Arrington, 599 So. 2d 24 (Ala. 1992).
[2]  For a full understanding of my views on First Amendment protections, see my dissent in Camp v. Yeager, 601 So. 2d 924, 926 (Ala.1992), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 113 S. Ct. 967, 122 L. Ed. 2d 122 (1993).