Title: In re Verified Petition of Michael G. Venezia
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: a-63-05
State: new-jersey
Issuer: new-jersey Supreme Court
Date: June 13, 2007

SUPREME COURT OF NEW JERSEY A- 63 September Term 2005 IN RE VERIFIED PETITION OF MICHAEL G. VENEZIA, Appellant. Argued April 3, 2006 Decided June 13, 2007 On certification to the Superior Court, Appellate Division. Ralph J. Lamparello argued the cause for appellant (Chasan Leyner &amp; Lamparello, attorneys; Mr. Lamparello and Michael D. Witt, of counsel; Mr. Witt and Cindy Nan Vogelman, on the briefs). Louis Pashman argued the cause for respondent North Jersey Media Group (Pashman Stein, attorneys). Bruce S. Rosen argued the cause for respondent Andrew B. Glazer (McCusker, Anselmi, Rosen, Carvelli &amp; Walsh, attorneys; Mr. Rosen and Alicyn B. Craig, on the briefs). Thomas J. Cafferty and Nomi I. Lowy submitted a brief on behalf of amici curiae, New Jersey Press Association, Newark Morning Ledger Company, d/b/a The Star-Ledger, The Associated Press, Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc., NYP Holdings, Inc. d/b/a The New York Post, ABC, Inc., Gannett Co., Inc. and The New York Times Company (Scarinci &amp; Hollenbeck, attorneys). JUSTICE ALBIN delivered the opinion of the Court. New Jersey s Shield Law, N.J.S.A. 2A:84A-21 to -21.8, also known as the newsperson s privilege, provides the news media far-reaching protections that are equaled by few states in the nation. Under our Shield Law, a news reporter generally can refuse to disclose in a legal inquiry any information concerning a published news article. Like all privileges, however, the Shield Law is not absolute and can be waived when a reporter knowingly discloses information in circumstances unrelated to the news reporting and gathering process. This appeal comes before us as a result of plaintiff Michael Venezia s pursuit of a defamation action against Laurence Cherchi, the former mayor of the Borough of Leonia, based on remarks attributed to Cherchi in a news article in The Record. On the one hand, the author of that article, Andrew Glazer, has spoken to agents of the Bergen County Prosecutor s Office and the Leonia Borough attorney about Cherchi s comments in the article. On the other, he has invoked the Shield Law in refusing to answer deposition questions that Venezia s counsel intends to ask about Cherchi s alleged defamatory remarks that were published in The Record. Without Glazer s testimony, Venezia has no case against Cherchi. The Law Division found that Glazer waived the privilege and ordered him to submit to the deposition. The Appellate Division disagreed and reversed. We now hold that the privilege cannot be selectively invoked. Once Glazer stepped from behind the privilege and spoke outside of the news gathering and reporting process about his conversation with Cherchi, he could not seek the refuge of the privilege to deny Venezia s attorney what he already had told others. Therefore, Venezia s attorney may ask Glazer the same questions that Glazer was willing to answer when queried by the prosecutor s investigators and the borough attorney. In addition to responding to those questions, Glazer must produce any notes that will affirm or refute whether Cherchi made the statements attributed to him in the article. So on Cherchi s first day in office almost a year ago, his new administration sent the young cop walking. Cherchi said the trouble that followed was tied to the fact that Venezia is the son of state Superior Court Judge Donald R. Venezia, who presides in Hackensack. . . . . Cherchi refused to say what he learned from Venezia s personnel file. Public records do not reveal that Venezia had been convicted of a crime. But Cherchi said that his administration found the crime serious enough to take Venezia off the police force. He said the prior administration had tried to cover up the officer s record so he could slip into the job. And Cherchi said he had consulted with the borough attorney before taking action. A memo written by the attorney . . . last month advised Cherchi and the council that they were permitted to seek information about an employee s expunged criminal record. We saw that it was our job to have the best people on the police force that we could, Cherchi said. Once I satisfied myself that these things were true, we decided to take action so we could. [Andrew Glazer, Leonia Mayor Says Fax Backs His Case Against Rivals, The Record (Hackensack, N.J.), Dec. 28, 2004, at L-1.] In response to that article, on January 5, 2005, Venezia served a notice of tort claim pursuant to N.J.S.A. 59:8-4 on Cherchi and the Borough, alleging that Venezia s reputation had been damaged by the defamatory statements made by Cherchi. The tort claim asserted that Cherchi uttered those statements knowing they were false or with reckless disregard for the truth. In a follow-up article published on January 12, The Record reported that Cherchi claimed that not only was he misquoted in the earlier article, but it was his understanding that Venezia wasn t convicted of anything. Scott Fallon, Ex-probationary officer says he ll sue Leonia and its mayor, The Record (Hackensack, N.J.), Jan. 12, 2005, at L-3. The article included a statement from The Record s managing editor that the newspaper [stood] by the original story. Ibid. Two days later, The Record published the following letter from Cherchi in which he denied that he made any statement to Glazer about Venezia s criminal history: [Your December 28 article] attributes to me the statement that the policeman of the borough of Leonia terminated earlier this year has been convicted of a crime. I did not make that statement, and as far as I know that policeman has not been convicted of a crime. I would appreciate that you publish a correction. [Laurence P. Cherchi, Editorial, Leonia mayor and borough cop, The Record (Hackensack, N.J.), Jan. 14, 2005.] Beneath Cherchi s letter appeared the following: Editor s note: The Record stands by its Dec. 28 story. Ibid. Based in part on the Glazer article, Mayor Cherchi became the target of a criminal investigation conducted by the Bergen County Prosecutor s Office, which sought to determine whether Cherchi unlawfully disclosed Venezia s confidential personnel file. Pursuant to that investigation, the prosecutor s office advised Jennifer Borg, counsel for NJ Media Group, that it intended to subpoena Glazer to testify before a grand jury about the contents of his December 28 article. As a result of a verbal agreement between Borg and an assistant Bergen County prosecutor, The Record allowed Glazer to authenticate the information published in the December 28, 2004 article provided that the prosecutor s office refrained from enforcing the subpoena or asking questions [of Glazer] which went beyond authentication. In a certification, Borg explained that [b]ecause the information contained in the December 28 article had already been published and the source of the information was clearly identified in the article, The Record determined that authentication was a viable option in this instance to avoid a potentially costly legal battle with the prosecutor s office. On January 18, 2005, accompanied by Borg, Glazer appeared in the Bergen County Prosecutor s office, where he submitted to an interview under oath conducted by two county detectives. Borg, however, was not present during the interview itself. In a ten-page statement to the detectives, Glazer detailed his telephone conversation with Mayor Cherchi that led to the December 28 article and provided some general background about his news reporting responsibilities. The questioning covered in depth the genesis of the December 28 article: Q. Let me show you a copy of an article which was printed in The Bergen Record on December 28, 2004. Do you recognize that article? A. Yes. Q. How do you recognize that article? A. I m the author of it. Q. The information that you wrote in that article, where did you get that information? A. Through interviews and documents. Q. Who did you interview for that article? A. I interviewed the Mayor Lawrence Cherchi and former Mayor Kaufman. Q. Do you recall when these interviews took place? A. I believe the interview with Mayor Cherchi occurred on the 27th of December and I believe the interview with Paul Kaufman happened perhaps a day earlier. Q. That would be in 2004, correct? A. 2004. Q. Where did those interviews take place? A. They were telephone interviews at my office. Q. How did you happen to have the interviews with Mr. Cherchi and Mr. Kaufman? Did they contact you or did you contact them? A. I believe I contacted them each. Q. You also stated you received other information that you attributed to this article. What was that besides the interviews? A. They were documents. I refer to in the story to facts, that I obtained. It was facts as referred to this information from former Mayor Kaufman and Judge Venezia. Q. Who sent you those documents? A. I will not say. The detectives then inquired about Cherchi s disclosure of information from Venezia s file: Q. I m going to bring to your attention a line in the article that you wrote. Have you read that line? A. Yes. Q. Can you read that line into the record please? A. In the file they learned that Venezia had been convicted of an undisclosed crime, Cherchi said. Q. Who gave you that information? A. I attributed it to Cherchi. He gave it to me. Q. Did Mr. Cherchi really give you that information without being asked a question or did you ask him a question? A. I don t recall how I got that information, but it was the interview with him on the record that I attributed to in the story. Q. Was Mr. Cherchi aware that the information he was giving to you was going to be written in the news article? A. Yes, I made it clear all statements are precluded with the off the record statement or a background statement. What my sources tell me is for publication. . . . . Q. Just pertaining to the information in the article, was any of the information Mr. Cherchi gave you or that Mr. Kaufman provided you with, was any of that off the record or just for the conversation, not for print in the news article? A. Everything that was published in the article was on the record. Q. Was Mr. Cherchi and Mr. Kaufman aware of that? A. Both of them were made aware what they were telling me was being published in the article and on the record. The detectives also discovered that Glazer took notes of his conversation with Cherchi: Did you tape the conversation you had with Mr. Cherchi or Mr. Kaufman? No, I didn t tape the conversations. Do you have any notes on your interview with Mr. Cherchi or Mr. Kaufman? I have some notes from that conversation. Do you have them with you? A. No. Glazer also recalled that after publication of the article he had a telephone conversation with Cherchi in which Cherchi denied making the statements attributed to him. Last, Glazer told the detectives that he checked a database available to The Record, and it revealed that Venezia had not been convicted of a crime. Sometime before May 5, 2005, Michael Russo, the Leonia Borough attorney, conversed with Glazer about the statements attributed to Cherchi in the December 28 article. In reference to Venezia s suit against the Borough and his conversation with Glazer, Russo wrote to the Borough s insurer: I subsequently discussed this mater with Andrew Glazer. He advised me that he was aware of the article and stood by what he had written in the article. I asked him if [he] agreed that the information in dispute was factually incorrect in that Michael Venezia was never convicted of a crime. I believe he confirmed that he presently agreed that the information printed regarding this issue was false although I do not believe he stated that he realized the information was false at the time he wrote the article. However, he was very definitive that he had written the article based upon the oral statements of Mayor Cherchi and he stood by his story. On May 9, 2005, Venezia filed a verified petition in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, seeking an order permitting him to conduct a pre-litigation deposition of Glazer pursuant to Rule 4:11-1 and directing Glazer to produce any notes or recordings of his conversation with Cherchi. Venezia represented that through Glazer s testimony he intended to establish that Cherchi made the defamatory statements attributed to him in the article. In a responding certification, Glazer stated that he would invoke the newsperson s privilege and therefore decline to give testimony or produce the requested documents. He also noted that as of July 12, 2005, he would no longer be residing in the United States. On June 9, 2005, the Law Division granted Venezia s petition and ordered that Glazer appear for a deposition the next day for the purpose of giving testimony and producing all documents, notes, electronic files, or recordings related to the December 28 article. The court determined that publication of the article itself and The Record s later published editor s pronouncements standing by the article constituted a waiver of the Shield Law. On June 10, 2005, in response to an emergent application by NJ Media Group, the Appellate Division granted a stay of the deposition pending appeal. Two weeks later, in an unpublished per curiam opinion, the Appellate Division vacated the Law Division s order compelling the deposition and dismissed Venezia s verified petition. The appellate panel maintained that in the circumstances of this case the newsperson s privilege was absolute. Relying on this Court s decisions in In re Schuman, 114 N.J. 14 (1989) and Maressa v. New Jersey Monthly, 89 N.J. 176, cert. denied, 459 U.S. 907, 103 S. Ct. 211, 74 L. Ed. 2d 169 (1982), the panel determined that both Glazer and The Record had the right to assert the privilege for the purpose of protecting from disclosure (1) notes taken in the course of interviewing individuals for the story; (2) identity of undisclosed sources consulted, whether or not actually used in the story; and (3) any other information obtained by Glazer in the course of pursuing his professional activities whether or not it is disseminated. (quoting N.J.R.E. 508(a)). Neither the Law Division s order nor the Appellate Division s opinion addressed whether Glazer s voluntary interview with the county detectives or his conversation with the Leonia Borough attorney concerning the December 28 article constituted a waiver of the privilege. We granted Venezia s petition for certification challenging the Appellate Division s dismissal of the order compelling Glazer s deposition and the production of discovery. 185 N.J. 389 (2005). We also granted permission for the New Jersey Press Association, The Star-Ledger, The Associated Press, Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc., The New York Post, ABC, Inc., Gannett Co., Inc., and The New York Times Company to participate as amici curiae. Between the Appellate Division opinion and our grant of certification, Venezia filed a civil action against NJ Media Group and Glazer alleging libel. Venezia later amended the complaint naming as additional defendants the Borough of Leonia and Mayor Cherchi. The amended complaint alleged a number of causes of action, including defamation, false light, and state civil rights violations against Leonia and Cherchi; breach of contract and negligent supervision against Leonia; and libel against NJ Media Group and Glazer. A second amended complaint included federal civil rights violations against Leonia and Cherchi and false light against NJ Media Group and Glazer. See footnote 1 a. The source, author, means, agency or person from or through whom any information was procured, obtained, supplied, furnished, gathered, transmitted, compiled, edited, disseminated, or delivered; and b. Any news or information obtained in the course of pursuing his professional activities whether or not it is disseminated. A reporter acts in the course of pursuing his professional activities whenever he obtains information for the purpose of disseminating it to the public. N.J.S.A. 2A:84A-21a(h). For instance, the privilege covers even journalistic information picked-up at a social gathering. See ibid. The privilege, however, does not extend to a reporter who intentionally conceals from the source his professional identity or who witnesses or participates in any act involving physical violence or property damage. Ibid. Over the years, the Legislature has expanded the breadth of the privilege and thus expressed its intent to provide the press with the greatest possible means of protecting both confidential sources and, more generally, the manner in which it gathers information. See In re Farber, 78 N.J. 259, 270, cert. denied, 439 U.S. 997, 99 S. Ct. 598, 58 L. Ed. 2d 670 (1978). The reporter s privilege not only covers all information received during the newsgathering process, but also information that is published in a news periodical, whether or not the source is confidential. Schuman, supra, 114 N.J. at 22, 25-27, 30-31. Disclosure of information, however, by a newsperson outside of the newsgathering and news reporting process constitutes a waiver of the privilege. Id. at 26. Indeed, the very first words of the Shield Law begin by explicitly stating that the newsperson s privilege is subject to the waiver provisions of N.J.R.E. 530. The waiver provisions of that evidence rule generally apply to all privileges, including attorney-client and patient-physician. See generally Biunno, Current N.J. Rules of Evidence, comment on N.J.R.E. 530 (2007). N.J.R.E. 530 provides that [a] person waives his right or privilege to refuse to disclose or to prevent another from disclosing a specified matter if he or any other person while the holder thereof has (a) contracted with anyone not to claim the right or privilege or, (b) without coercion and with knowledge of his right or privilege, made disclosure of any part of the privileged matter or consented to such a disclosure made by anyone. A disclosure which is itself privileged or otherwise protected by the common law, statutes or rules of court of this State, or by lawful contract, shall not constitute a waiver under this section. The failure of a witness to claim a right or privilege with respect to one question shall not operate as a waiver with respect to any other question. [(emphasis added).] The Shield Law, however, also has its own waiver provision, applicable in criminal cases, that seemingly gives more protection to the press than N.J.R.E. 530 -- the general waiver rule. N.J.S.A. 2A:84A-21.3b, which was added to the Shield Law by a 1979 amendment, states: Publication shall constitute a waiver only as to the specific materials published. See L. 1979, c. 479, 3. In Maressa, supra, we concluded that it was inconceivable that the Legislature intended a broader view of waiver in civil matters, where the public interest in disclosure is less compelling. 89 N.J. at 195. For that reason, we found that by enacting N.J.S.A. 2A:84A-21.3b, the Legislature intended to narrow the scope of waiver in all proceedings, not just criminal proceedings. Ibid. Accordingly, media defendants in civil cases are accorded the same favorable waiver provision contained in N.J.S.A. 2A:84A-21.3b, which is applicable to criminal cases. Thus, a reporter who divulges one piece of information does not waive the general protection of the privilege with respect to all other matters covered in an article. Ibid. ( [P]ublication of privileged information constitutes a waiver only as to that specific information. (footnote omitted)). To be sure, a reporter may lose the sweeping protections of the Shield Law if the reporter abandons the privilege by disseminating information outside of the newsgathering and news reporting process. By way of an illustration given in Schuman, supra, a waiver of the privilege may occur when a newsperson communicat[es] information or sources with friends and neighbors outside the course of newsgathering activities. 114 N.J. at 26. Courts in other jurisdictions also have found a waiver of the newsperson s privilege when a reporter makes a disclosure in circumstances unrelated to newsgathering or news reporting. Pinkard v. Johnson, 118 F.R.D. 517, 523 (M.D. Ala. 1987) (commenting that [a] reporter is not free to give a sworn statement to a litigant, and later invoke the qualified reporter privilege to keep this information from the Court ); Wheeler v. Goulart, 593 A.2d 173, 174-75 (D.C. 1991) (holding that reporter waived privilege when she disclosed source to two different individuals, in no way connected with her employer ); see also In re Dan, 363 N.Y.S.2d 493, 497 (Sup. Ct. 1975) (noting in dicta that reporter s privilege waived because reporter gave statement to assistant attorney general and governmental commission regarding events he observed). SUPREME COURT OF NEW JERSEY NO. A-63 SEPTEMBER TERM 2005 ON CERTIFICATION TO Appellate Division, Superior Court IN RE VERIFIED PETITION OF MICHAEL G. VENEZIA, Appellant. DECIDED June 13, 2007 Justice Long PRESIDING OPINION BY Justice Albin CONCURRING/DISSENTING OPINIONS BY DISSENTING OPINION BY