Opinion ID: 2025227
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: the verdicts were warranted by the evidence

Text: The circuit court directed a verdict in favor of Carl Young due to an insufficiency of evidence of actual malice on his part. Having been directed that Carl Young acted without malice, the jury was required to consider the alleged malice of only Bob Wilson and the corporate defendant. The jury found (in special interrogatories) that no such malice existed with respect to either the December 21, 1978, article with Bob Wilson's by-line, the captions and pictures accompanying that article, the December 23, 1978, article, the March 6, 1979, article, the March 28, 1979, article, or the March 29, 1979, article.
The United States Supreme Court has held that a ruling on a motion for a directed verdict or summary judgment necessarily implicates the substantive evidentiary standard of proof that would apply at the trial on the merits. ( Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. (1986), 477 U.S. 242, 252, 91 L.Ed.2d 202, 214, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 2512.) While Anderson was applying the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, its observation was equally applicable to actions in State court. With respect to libel claims brought by public officials relating to their official conduct, the first amendment mandates a `clear and convincing' standard, [and] the trial judge in disposing of a directed verdict motion should consider whether a reasonable factfinder could conclude, for example, that the plaintiff had shown actual malice with convincing clarity. 477 U.S. at 252, 91 L.Ed.2d at 214, 106 S.Ct. at 2512. Plaintiff fell far short of establishing with convincing clarity that Carl Young's role in publishing any articles at issue involved actual malice. His role in one of the December 21, 1978, articles (the article containing no by-line) was peripheral at most. His testimony indicates that he was asked to call and obtain statements from one or more officers mentioned in the report. He remembers calling only one officer. He does not recollect calling Officer Reed, and there is no testimony in the record that he did so. (Reed does not remember who from CN called him.) Carl Young remembers typing his notes of these conversations and believes that he gave the notes to Les Smith. Carl Young does not know whether Les Smith actually wrote the article. Although Carl Young had by this point glanced at the grand jury report mentioning Reed, there is no indication that he had studied the report at any length. Rather, a fair reading of his testimony indicates that he was busy that day preparing his scanner (police beat) report, was asked to call one or more officers, hurriedly did so and made notes of his conversations, and then returned to his other duties. If the burden of proof in this case were less than it is, then plaintiff would perhaps have a better argument that the motion for a directed verdict should have been denied. However, after reading the record, we, like the circuit court, fail to see how a reasonable jury could find that plaintiff had established with clear and convincing evidence that on December 21, 1978, Carl Young wrote that Reed was implicated in the report. There is even less evidence that Young made such a statement while actually entertaining serious doubts as to the truth of the assertion. The second article about which Carl Young's involvement was questioned appeared on March 6, 1979. That article contains the following language: A seven page summary of the usually secret grand jury testimony was released to the public, and it named three current officers and one sheriff's deputy as participants in at least one of the 1970-71 break-ins. Although Carl Young stated that he probably read the grand jury report between the time that the December articles were published and the time that this article was published, he stated that he based the above-quoted statement on previous stories  stories which he had little, if any, role in writing. Considering testimony that Young relied on previous stories, and considering that the report itself is extremely murky in its discussion of numerous officers, including Michael Reed (so that unless one scrutinizes the report one could very well conclude that Reed had been implicated), we agree with the circuit court that a jury could not reasonably find clear and convincing evidence that Carl Young had a high degree of awareness of the probable falsity of his articles. Insufficiency of evidence with regard to malice of Carl Young is equally applicable to the other articles about which he was questioned; there simply is insufficient evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, to rise to the level of clear and convincing proof.
Plaintiff submits that the jury's verdict in favor of Bob Wilson was against the manifest weight of the evidence. Keeping in mind the heavy burden of proof which the United States Supreme Court has imposed upon public official libel plaintiffs, we must disagree with plaintiff's assertion. There can be no doubt that Bob Wilson failed to scrutinize the grand jury report as carefully as (one would hope) a responsible journalist would do. He even acknowledged that in the December 21, 1978, article, he had falsely asserted that a witness testified to finding Reed inside a dark, burglarized building without his flashlight on. Wilson stated that he had mixed up some details with another break-in at another place where officers were seen inside without their flashlights on. Moreover, the jury explicitly found (by special interrogatory) that Bob Wilson's December 21, 1978, article, as it relates to plaintiff, was false. We cannot, however, say that the jury's finding (also by special interrogatory) that Wilson acted without malice is against the manifest weight of the evidence. In this regard we again note, without disputing the jury's finding of falsity, that a less than thorough reading of the grand jury report could easily leave one with the conclusion that plaintiff was involved in some burglaries to some extent. The possibility of this happening is particularly evidenced by the testimony (in an offer of proof) of the assistant State's Attorney who drafted the report; the drafter indicated that he himself believed he was naming Reed as being peripherally involved. We further note that, at the request of the city editor, Randy Kirk, Wilson called the State's Attorney's office and made some effort to verify his report. Wilson testified as follows in response to questioning regarding what he asked when calling the State's Attorney's office: A. I asked  I believe I first asked the State's Attorney, Thomas Fahey, and he referred me to Craig DeArmond since Craig DeArmond conducted the grand jury and authored the report. Q. What conversation did you have with Mr. DeArmond? A. I asked Mr. DeArmond what it meant to have these  for these officers names to be included in this report. Q. What did he indicate to you? A. He said that those officers, unless their roles are otherwise spelled out, were those officers identified by two or more witnesses placed at the scene of two or more of these police burglaries. Q. Did he indicate to you that they were involved? A. Not in  not each one as to their specific acts. Although this testimony does not indicate a thorough investigation on Wilson's part, it certainly weakens the assertion that when writing the article he entertained serious doubts as to its accuracy. Plaintiff argues, however, that actual malice is clear from certain additional evidence. In this regard plaintiff points out that Wilson acknowledged looking at the log of grand jury witnesses in September 1977, when the grand jury was first convening regarding the alleged burglary ring. Plaintiff apparently deems this relevant because the grand jury report states that the accused officers were given the opportunity to testify. Plaintiff seemingly argues that Wilson must have recognized that Reed was not an accused officer since his name did not appear on the list of grand jury witnesses. We find this argument unpersuasive for several reasons. First, the grand jury met on numerous occasions after September 1977; the absence of Reed's name from a witness list in September does not exclude the possibility that he was later called as a witness. Second, one can hardly conclude that the reporter recalled the names on that log when reading the grand jury report 15 months later. Nor does evidence that he had previously heard certain officers named as being involved (and had not heard Reed implicated) indicate that, after reading the grand jury report and calling the State's Attorney's office, he subsequently seriously doubted that the grand jury report implicated Reed. Finally, contrary to plaintiff's assertion, the fact that in attempting to meet a press deadline Wilson spent only about three hours writing the article does not necessitate a conclusion that he seriously doubted its accuracy. With respect to the December 23, 1978, article authored by Bob Wilson (an article which the jury found was also false as to plaintiff), we agree that Wilson's failure to reread the grand jury report evinces some carelessness, but we cannot say that as a matter of law this failure requires a finding of actual malice.
Having established that the jury's verdict in favor of Bob Wilson is supportable and that the directed verdict in favor of Carl Young was proper, we next turn to the contention that the jury's verdict in favor of the corporate defendant, CN, was against the manifest weight of the evidence. A corporation's liability for slander or libel is based on the doctrine of respondeat superior; a corporation is jointly and severally liable for libelous statements actionable against its employee when the employee is acting within the scope of his employment. ( Windsor Lake, Inc. v. WROK (1968), 94 Ill. App.2d 403; Randall Dairy Co. v. Pevely Dairy Co. (1934), 274 Ill. App. 474. See also Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (7th Cir.1982), 680 F.2d 527, 539 & n. 19 (imputing an agent's actual malice to the corporate defendant).) We cannot, however, circumvent the actual-malice requirement in this case by pooling all of the information arguably within the knowledge of various employees and imputing all of that knowledge to the corporate defendant to establish that the corporate defendant acted with actual malice. This is what plaintiff seems to be asking us to do, pointing out the various items of information which at some point were known (or may have been known) to different employees. In our view, before a corporate defendant may be found liable under the actual-malice standard, there must be a finding that at least one agent or employee involved in publishing the material acted with actual malice. As already discussed, defendant has not established that either Wilson or Young acted with actual malice. We also believe (as discussed below) that there was insufficient evidence to necessitate a finding that any other employee involved acted with actual malice. The other employees somewhat involved in the publications at issue include Randy Kirk and Ronald Dillman. The evidence established that Randy Kirk, city editor at the time of the publications in issue, had heard a flurry of rumors in 1970 and 1971 about various officers being involved in burglaries. He had heard some specific names mentioned, and Reed's name was not among them. In 1976 or 1977 an undisclosed source gave CN particular names and dates regarding particular burglaries, which information was passed along to Kirk. Still, Reed's name was never mentioned to Kirk. In fact, Kirk acknowledged that Reed's name was never mentioned to Kirk before release of the grand jury report. Kirk's knowledge that certain individuals were allegedly involved, in conjunction with the fact that Reed's name was not mentioned to him, does not, in our view, amount to such clear and convincing evidence that a jury would be required to find that Kirk acted with actual malice. This is particularly true in view of the undisputed evidence that, upon seeing the long list of officers listed in the draft of Bob Wilson's December 21, 1978, article, Kirk explicitly instructed Wilson to verify the names with the State's Attorney's office, and that Wilson later reported to Kirk that he had done so. Nor, in our view, does the failure to do any further checking into this same issue before allowing the follow-up story necessarily establish actual malice on Kirk's part. Kirk supervised 12 reporters, and there is no evidence that he undertook or should have undertaken the task of verifying all of the facts in a story  a task which the testimony indicates was primarily left to the individual reporters. Ron Dillman, the executive editor at the time the articles in issue were published, was kept abreast of the stories' contents. He gave uncontradicted testimony that he directed Kirk to verify the facts in the December 21, 1978, story. In view of this evidence, we fail to see how the jury could be required to find that Dillman acted with actual malice. Nor do we believe that his failure to do any additional investigation before allowing follow-up stories to be published necessarily indicates actual malice. Dillman was in charge of overseeing the newspaper's entire operation; it is simply not realistic to expect Dillman to have verified the role of each officer who his reporter stated was implicated. In reviewing the jury's conclusions regarding lack of malice, we have found that the circuit court failed to submit any jury instructions as to one of the December 21, 1978, articles, namely, the article which contained no by-line but to which Carl Young admittedly contributed. Perhaps the parties understood that since there was no proof of any other CN employee's involvement in this article, and since a verdict was directed for Carl Young, there was no need to submit an instruction on this article to the jury. The record is completely unclear on why this particular December 21 article was dropped from deliberation, and the parties have not addressed this occurrence. In any event, it is clear that if there were any error in failing to have the jury make an explicit finding regarding this article, the error was waived by failure to object at trial. (See Western Casualty & Surety Co. v. Brochu (1985), 105 Ill.2d 486, 500.) It is equally clear that any such error was harmless. The reason is that the only individuals (other than Carl Young) arguably shown to be involved in this second December 21, 1978, article were as much (if not more) involved in the other December 21 article, which contained the same allegedly libelous statement that plaintiff had been implicated in burglaries. The jury's having found no malice with respect to the first December 21 article, it is manifest that the jury was equally unconvinced of malice with regard to the second December 21 article.