Opinion ID: 771328
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Common-Law Privilege

Text: 25 The magistrate judge granted summary judgment to Prudential by applying New York's law of qualified (or conditional) privilege. New York common law affords qualified protection to defamatory communication[s] made by one person to another upon a subject in which both have an interest. Stillman v. Ford, 22 N.Y.2d 48, 53, 238 N.E.2d 304, 306, 290 N.Y.S.2d 893, 897 (1968). There also appears to be a similar, albeit less developed, privilege covering a speaker's communications designed to protect the speaker's own legitimate interests. See British Am. & E. Co. v. Wirth Ltd., 592 F.2d 75, 81 (2d Cir. 1979); Restatement (Second) of Torts § 594 (1977). 3 The magistrate judge concluded that the Statements were covered by both of these privileges. See Konikoff, 1999 WL 688460, at , 1999 U.S. Dist., at -50. 26 If a defamatory communication is conditionally privileged, the plaintiff may nonetheless prevail by establishing that it was published excessively, i.e., it was made to persons with an insufficient interest in it for it to warrant protection, see Stukuls v. State, 42 N.Y.2d 272, 281, 366 N.E.2d 829, 835, 397 N.Y.S.2d 740, 746 (1977) (citing Restatement (Second) of Torts § 604 (1977)), or that it was made with malice, see Liberman v. Gelstein, 80 N.Y.2d 429, 437-38, 605 N.E.2d 344, 349-50, 590 N.Y.S.2d 857, 862-63 (1992). 4 27 Malice sufficient to defeat qualified privilege may be either of the common law or of the constitutional variety. See id. Common-law malice mean[s] spite or ill will, id. at 437, 605 N.E.2d at 349, 590 N.Y.S.2d at 862, and will defeat the privilege only if it is 'the one and only cause for the publication,' id. at 439, 605 N.E.2d at 350, 590 N.Y.S.2d at 863 (quoting Stukuls, 42 N.Y.2d at 282, 366 N.E.2d at 835, 397 N.Y.S.2d at 746). Constitutional or actual malice means publication 'with [a] high degree of awareness of [the publication's] probable falsity' or while 'the defendant in fact entertained serious doubts as to the truth of [the] publication.' Id. at 438, 605 N.E.2d at 350, 590 N.Y.S.2d at 863 (quoting, respectively, Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64, 74 (1964) and St. Amant v. Thompson, 390 U.S. 727, 731 (1968)) (first and third brackets in original). The critical difference between common-law malice and constitutional malice, then, is that the former focuses on the defendant's attitude toward the plaintiff, the latter on the defendant's attitude toward the truth. See, e.g., Price v. Viking Penguin, Inc., 881 F.2d 1426, 1433 (8th Cir. 1989), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1036 (1990); Carson v. Allied News Co., 529 F.2d 206, 209 (7th Cir. 1976). 28 The district court concluded that the audience for Prudential's publication of the Statements was appropriate and that the privilege was therefore not abused by excessive publication. See Konikoff, 1999 WL 688460, at -, 1999 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13501, at -. As for malice, the court first noted that the plaintiff did not seriously contend that the Statements were made solely out of spite or ill will, i.e., with common-law malice sufficient to defeat the privilege. See id. at , 1999 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13501, at . The Statements therefore did not lose their privilege on that account. After extensive analysis, the court concluded that as a matter of law, the Statements also had not been published with actual malice because Prudential neither knew the Statements were false nor entertained serious doubts as to their truth at the time it disseminated them. See id. at -. 29 We do not quarrel with the magistrate judge's conclusion as to absence of malice. Whether the privileges apply in these circumstances, however, presents a close question, one that New York courts have not yet resolved. Whereas Prudential communicated the Statements to the world at large through the media, the common-interest and self-interest privileges have traditionally been tightly confined to cases in which the alleged defamatory statements were published to an extremely limited, clearly defined group of private persons with an immediate relationship to the speaker, such as a family member or an employer's own employees. Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., Why an Expanded Common-law Privilege Should Also Protect the Media, Communications Lawyer, Spring 1997, at 9 (citing Brown v. Kelly Broadcasting Co., 48 Cal. 3d 711, 727, 257 Cal. Rptr. 708, 716, 771 P.2d 406, 414 (1989)). There is authority in other jurisdictions for expanding the privilege to include communications to the general public through the press. See, e.g., Richmond v. Southwire Co., 980 F.2d 518, 520 (8th Cir. 1992) (small-town employer's release to media of report on employee dishonesty protected by self-interest privilege under Arkansas law) (citing Straitwell v. National Steel Corp., 869 F.2d 248, 250-52 (4th Cir. 1989) (common-interest privilege applicable in similar circumstances under West Virginia law)). 5 Courts applying New York law, however, have not extended the privilege to cover publication of defamatory statements through the media to the world at large. 6 30 Application of the self-interest or common-interest privilege in this case could have significant ramifications. It might, for example, be read as extending the privileges to all defensive statements to and through the media made by people and entities that deal with the general public, on the theory that all such communications are either in the legitimate self-interest of the speaker or in the common interest of the speaker and the general investing or consuming public. There is no apparent reason for the privilege, expanded in this manner, to be limited to the somewhat unusual circumstances before us: the republication by a defendant of statements contained in independent reports generated by outsider lawyers, accountants or other consultants. Similar protection would likely follow for defamatory statements generated by defendants themselves in response to assertions of their wrongdoing. 31 It is also difficult to see why the common-interest privilege thus broadly applied would not protect media defendants from liability for statements they publish and broadcast about private persons, since members of the media share with their audience a common interest in the events of the day. See Boutrous, supra, at 10. Under that rationale, private plaintiffs seeking to hold members of the press liable for defamatory articles or broadcasts would be required to establish common-law or constitutional malice on the part of the defendant. That result is difficult to square with the prevailing rule established by the New York Court of Appeals that private plaintiffs must show that the defendant was grossly irresponsible to establish liability. See Chapadeau v. Utica Observer-Dispatch, Inc., 38 N.Y.2d 196, 199, 341 N.E.2d 569, 571, 379 N.Y.S.2d 61, 64 (1975). 32 We do not hold that the common-law privileges are unavailable with respect to communications by and through the media under New York law, nor even that they do not protect Prudential in the case at bar. Were we forced to reach the issue, we might be inclined to certify to the New York Court of Appeals the question whether New York common-law privilege covers statements to the general public under the circumstances of this case. We decline to do so, however, because we can affirm the judgment of the district court on different and firmer footing: the Chapadeau standard.