Opinion ID: 2278018
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The self-reported statement exception

Text: The Restatement commentary adds one final reservation to the fair reporting privilege: A person cannot confer this privilege upon himself by making the original defamatory publication himself and then reporting to other people what he had stated. This is true whether the original publication was privileged or not. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 611, comment c. At first blush, this comment would appear to apply to Rosenberg's situation, and defeat his claim to the privilege. Upon closer analysis of the pertinent authorities, however, we find that this exception does not apply in the instant case. The question of privileged self-reported statements is one of first impression in this Court. [5] The Restatement offers no case law in support of its blanket denial of the privilege to those persons who report their own defamatory statements made during a court proceeding. The commentary quoted above does not appear in either of the two tentative draft versions of § 611 produced before the current, published text. See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 611 (Tentative Draft No. 20, 1974) and id. (Tentative Draft No. 21, 1975). The decision to include the commentary was made after a brief discussion at a meeting of the American Law Institute, during which one participant called the proposed comment a flat contradiction of the black letter law as set forth in § 611. See 52 A.L.I. Proceedings 188 (1976). The commentators and cases interpret § 611 as conferring protection upon any persons who do not act maliciously by commencing judicial proceedings in bad faith and then later repeating their own defamatory statements under the aegis of privilege. Professors Harper, James and Gray put it succinctly: The privilege should certainly not be recognized when the occasion for invoking it appears to have been fabricated. The defamer who makes the original statement in a privileged setting should not be shielded by a reporting privilege in repeating it himself outside that setting. Nor should the privilege be recognized for the reporting of statements that were made in spurious circumstances, devised primarily to provide a pretext for the claim of the privilege. 2 Harper et al., Law of Torts at 207-08. See also Elder, Fair Report Privilege at 171. We think this to be the better interpretation of the Restatement; the privilege will be forfeited only if the defamer illegitimately fabricated or orchestrated events so as to appear in a privileged forum in the first place. That is the true danger against which the self-reported statement exception must guard. This view is consistent with the relatively few cases dealing with self-reported statements. The Court of Appeals of New Mexico has observed that the exception is obviously intended to prevent abuse of the fair report privilege by, for example, a person who brings suit not with the aim of pursuing the purported legal objective, but to cause harm to another by pleading or announcing defamatory matter in court and then using the protective shield of the privilege to republish the defamatory matter to the world. Stover v. Journal Pub. Co., 105 N.M. 291, 731 P.2d 1335, 1339 (1985), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 897, 108 S.Ct. 230, 98 L.Ed.2d 189 (1987). The Supreme Court of Arizona has held that this exception to the fair report privilege envisions the speaker who by design uses the privilege to republish defamation he previously made during the public proceeding. Green Acres Trust v. London, 141 Ariz. 609, 688 P.2d 617, 626 (1984) (emphasis added). The Court of Appeals of New York has determined that the state's statutory privilege does not protect a person who maliciously institutes a judicial proceeding alleging defamatory charges and then circulates a press release or other communication based thereon. Williams v. Williams, 23 N.Y.2d 592, 298 N.Y.S.2d 473, 477, 246 N.E.2d 333, 337 (1969). It is clear that the exception made for self-reported statements aims to deter those persons who, acting out of a corrupt defamatory motive, abuse the privilege accorded to fair and accurate reports of judicial proceedings. There is not the remotest indication in the record that Dr. Rosenberg sought in bad faith to testify at the domestic hearing with some perverse wish to harm Mr. Helinski afterwards by trumpeting defamatory matter to a television audience. To the contrary, he was engaged as an expert witness in the field of child psychology. He testified in that capacity, bound by his professional obligations to offer his best judgment. He had no personal stake in the outcome of the hearing. As he left the courthouse, he was approached by a T.V. news reporter and, in response to her questions, he then accurately and fairly recounted the substance of his testimony in court. In these circumstances, to deny the privilege to a witness reporting his own testimony, while the privilege is available to any other court spectator later recounting that same testimony, would defy logic.