Opinion ID: 712057
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Attribution of Unger's state of mind to Esquire

Text: 24 If Unger had been an employee of Esquire, his state of mind could undoubtedly be attributed to his employer. See Cantrell v. Forest City Publishing Co., 419 U.S. 245, 253-54, 95 S.Ct. 465, 470-71, 42 L.Ed.2d 419 (1974). As McFarlane effectively acknowledges, however, Unger was working as an independent contractor, not as an employee. McFarlane notes that Unger did use the prestige of Esquire by representing himself to interviewees as working for Esquire, so we assume that Esquire may have established some sort of agency relationship with Unger. Thus we consider the question whether the malice of a non-employee agent can be imputed to the principal under New York Times v. Sullivan. 25 New York Times itself is a good place to start. There the Court threw out the case against four individuals who (the Court assumed) had authorized use of their names as makers of the defamatory statement, explaining that there was no evidence whatever that they were aware of any erroneous statements or were in any way reckless in that regard. 376 U.S. at 286, 84 S.Ct. at 729. Thus the Court refused to impute to the individuals as principals any information in the minds of persons they authorized to act as their agents in the matter. 26 Nonetheless, a different rule might apply to a corporate defendant, which can act only through agents of one sort or another--employees or non-employee agents. Yet the courts have not so found. Commonly they have interpreted Cantrell as barring liability on any theory other than respondeat superior (which is limited to employees). See, e.g., Price v. Viking Penguin, Inc., 881 F.2d 1426, 1446 (8th Cir.1989); Secord v. Cockburn, 747 F.Supp. 779, 787 (D.D.C.1990). But Cantrell doesn't say that. The writer in question was an employee of the corporate defendant, and, although the trial court had given an instruction somewhat muddling the categories of employee and agent, no one had objected. Cantrell, 419 U.S. at 253-54 & n. 6, 95 S.Ct. at 470-71 & n. 6. So Cantrell presented no occasion for the Court to address the issue of when the mental state of non-employee agents may be imputed to the principal. See also Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., 832 F.Supp. 1350, 1371 (N.D.Cal.1993) (discussing Cantrell ). 27 McFarlane invokes Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 680 F.2d 527, 539 n. 19 (7th Cir.1982), but in that case the Supreme Court had already determined that the plaintiff there was not a public figure, so that states were free to impose liability on whatever ground they chose, so long as they do not impose liability without fault. Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 347, 94 S.Ct. 2997, 3010-11, 41 L.Ed.2d 789 (1974). On remand the Seventh Circuit applied an actual malice standard anyway, because Illinois law had adopted that standard for statements derived from public proceedings (some of which were at issue), and because (it ultimately concluded) the plaintiff had satisfied even that heightened standard with respect to yet other statements not covered by that privilege. Gertz, 680 F.2d at 537. As Masson explains, 832 F.Supp. at 1372-73, in so doing the court was willing to attribute the knowledge of the independent-contractor writer to the defendant under Illinois agency law for purposes of Illinois defamation law. Gertz, 680 F.2d at 539 n. 19. Gertz neither asserts nor cites authority for the proposition that vicarious liability can be the basis for finding actual malice under New York Times, apart from respondeat superior. In the next section of its opinion, to be sure, the Gertz court affirmed the imposition of punitive damages against the principal, Gertz, 680 F.2d at 540, which under federal constitutional law requires a showing of actual malice, see Gertz, 418 U.S. at 349, 94 S.Ct. at 3011-12; Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc., 472 U.S. 749, 756-57, 105 S.Ct. 2939, 2943-44, 86 L.Ed.2d 593 (1985), but with no discussion or analysis of the issue. In practice, then, Gertz has little significance as a ruling on actual malice under the New York Times standard, and our own analysis leads us to conclude that under New York Times actual malice may not be attributed outside respondeat superior. 28 Liability for the acts of a non-employee agent normally flows from the principal's authorization of the agent's acts, and establishment of the principal-agent relationship as a threshold matter is based largely upon control of one party by the other. See Restatement of Agency 2d Secs. 140, 14. The question here is what kind of control (if any) might suffice to tie Esquire to Unger's knowledge for these purposes. In Hunt v. Liberty Lobby, 720 F.2d 631 (11th Cir.1983), the court addressed the possibility that a principal might be liable for the malice of a non-employee agent on the grounds of its control over the agent's activities. Cf. Restatement of Agency 2d Sec. 254 (discussing imputation of agent's defamation to principal, without reference to malice). But the court in Hunt seemed to assume that the positions of independent contractor and of agent were mutually exclusive, Hunt, 720 F.2d at 649, which they are not, Restatement of Agency 2d Sec. 14 N cmt. a, and therefore conflated the enterprise of showing someone to be a de facto employee with that of showing agency. In any case, the court found no control by the publisher, as the writer had simply sold the publisher a finished product. Hunt, 720 F.2d at 648-49 & n. 30. This overlooks the fact of the publisher's ability to edit and, ultimately, to veto the publication--the court does not say that the article was sold on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Similarly, in Price v. Viking Penguin, 881 F.2d 1426, the court examined the editor's relation to the author. Finding that it was limited to matters of structure, priorities and clarity, the court declared that the author clearly was not an employee of Viking such that liability could be imputed, were we to find any, id. at 1446. Despite the court's reliance on the finding that the writer was not an employee, its examination of the editing process suggests that it may have viewed some forms of editorial control as a possible basis for vicarious liability for the state of mind of a non-employee agent, classification of the writer as an employee being clearly out of the question. 29 Although Hunt and Price seem to require an employment relationship, they might also be understood as supposing that some kinds of intense editorial involvement by a publisher's employees might entangle them in the independent writer's thought process enough to serve as a basis for holding the publisher vicariously liable. But why should editorial controls that take the employee editors themselves to a point short of actual malice be deemed to establish the publisher's actual malice? One answer might be that not to do so creates a perfect escape hatch for deep-pocket publications. But the answer is not completely satisfactory, as any writer who knowingly ventures into legally risky waters, and who is reluctant to experience personal bankruptcy, would presumably demand an indemnity agreement, putting the publisher on the line. Further, actual malice is a First Amendment protection predicated on a subjective state of mind, Hutchinson v. Proxmire, 443 U.S. 111, 120 n. 9, 99 S.Ct. 2675, 2680 n. 9, 61 L.Ed.2d 411 (1979) (citing New York Times ), which surely cuts against any extension of vicarious liability beyond respondeat superior. Because we doubt that actual malice can be imputed except under respondeat superior, and because in any case McFarlane presents no evidence showing Esquire's supervision of the process by which Unger turned raw data into finished article (as distinct from control over his final product), cf. Restatement of Agency 2d Sec. 14 N cmt. b, we conclude that McFarlane may show Esquire's malice only through evidence of the information available to, and conduct of, its employees. 30