Opinion ID: 4513070
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Actual Malice Issue

Text: Because Nelson Auto is a limited purpose public figure under Minnesota law, its Amended Complaint must plausibly allege that one or more of the allegedly false statements was made with actual malice. See Porous Media, 173 F.3d at 1116. Actual malice “may be alleged generally,” Fed. R. Civ. P. 9(b), but “to make out a plausible malice claim, a plaintiff must still lay out enough facts from which malice might reasonably be inferred.” Schatz v. Republican State Leadership Comm., 669 F.3d 50, 58 (1st Cir. 2012). “[E]very circuit that has considered the matter has applied the Iqbal/Twombly standard and held that a defamation suit may be dismissed for failure to state a claim where the plaintiff has not pled facts sufficient to give rise to a reasonable inference of actual malice.” Michel v. NYP Holdings, Inc., 816 F.3d 686, 702 (11th Cir. 2016) (collecting cases). Applying this standard, for Nelson Auto’s defamation claim to be plausible, the Amended Complaint must allege “enough fact[s] to raise a reasonable expectation that discovery will reveal evidence” that KARE 11 published one or more statements with actual malice, that is, knowing they were false or with reckless disregard for whether they were false or not. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556. This standard does not impose a probability requirement at the pleading stage. “[A] well-pleaded complaint -8- may proceed even if it strikes a savvy judge that actual proof of those facts is improbable, and that a recovery is very remote and unlikely.” Id. (quotation omitted). For convenience, we reproduce the relevant factual allegations in the Amended Complaint in the Appendix to this opinion. Looking first at KARE 11's initial website story and Facebook post on July 24, 2017, we agree with the district court that no plausible inference of actual malice can be inferred from the opening statement that “[a] state vendor is now facing criminal swindling charges . . . .” Although most readers would no doubt construe “vendor” as meaning the entity that sold the cars, Nelson Auto, the word could also logically refer to the employee in charge of the sale transactions, Fleet Manager Worner, and the following segment of the Facebook post expressly stated that the Otter Tail County indictment charged Worner with theft by swindle. Failure to recognize a mistake or ambiguity and its potential consequences is not evidence of a reckless disregard for the truth. See St. Amant v. Thompson, 390 U.S. 727, 733 (1968). In addition, when Nelson Auto complained that it had not been criminally charged, KARE 11 promptly corrected the mistake on its website. “[R]eadiness to print a retraction weighs against ‘malice.’” Zerangue v. TSP Newspapers, Inc., 814 F.2d 1066, 1071 (5th Cir. 1987). KARE 11 did not delete or correct the Facebook post, leaving in the public domain a damaging statement it had acknowledged was false. But the Amended Complaint did not allege facts inferring this was anything but a mistake by KARE 11. The allegation that KARE 11 published another story on its website in November 2017 containing a hyperlink to the uncorrected July 24 website story, rather than to the corrected version, requires a closer look. “[O]nce the publisher knows that the story is erroneous . . . the argument for weighting the scales on the side of [its] first amendment interests becomes less compelling.” Id. at 1072 (reversing the grant of summary judgment dismissing a defamation claim based on defendant’s post-retraction republication). However, the Amended Complaint is -9- devoid of allegations from which it can reasonably be inferred that the false statement was republished with reckless disregard for the truth. The subject of the November story is not identified, nor is it alleged that the false statement in the hyperlink was relevant to the new story. Nor is it plausibly alleged that the republication reflected personal or institutional bias against Nelson Auto. See Palin v. New York Times Co., 940 F.3d 804, 814 (2d Cir. 2019) (reversing dismissal of a defamation complaint for failure to plausibly allege actual malice). Given the absence of facts from which actual malice might reasonably be inferred, we agree with the district court that these allegations “show nothing more than oversight on KARE 11's part, which does not constitute actual malice.” For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court is affirmed.