Opinion ID: 2299520
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Whether AIPAC's Allegedly Defamatory Statement Was Provably False

Text: Rosen argues that Dorton's statement in the March 3, 2008 New York Times that AIPAC still held the view that Rosen's behavior `did not comport with the standards that AIPAC expects of its employees' was a statement both false and defamatory. AIPAC, he contends, did not dismiss Rosen for behavior not comporting with AIPAC standards because AIPAC had no such standards. Inherent in Rosen's contention is the following proposition: if AIPAC did have the referenced standards, they are provable as facts, warranting a trial rather than summary judgment; but if AIPAC did not have provable standards on which it relied to fire Rosenas Rosen believes a trial would showthe falsity of AIPAC's statement would be clear and its defamatory impact demonstrable. [22] In response to Rosen's argument, the trial court concluded, based on the pleadings and discovery, that the challenged statement does not rest on any objectively verifiable facts; it does not implicate any discernable objective standard. Thus, the statement was not provably false, and summary judgment was accordingly warranted. We agree, but a detailed explanation is required. AIPAC, as the party moving for summary judgment, must satisfy the initial burden of producing evidence, derived from discovery, showing an absence of proof on one or more essential elements of Rosen's claim. [23] To satisfy that burden, for example, AIPAC could cite evidence that Rosen had failed to show that the standards for employee conduct referred to in AIPAC's statement were provably false. If AIPAC were able to do so, then the burden would shift to Rosen to avoid summary judgment by designating `specific facts,' taken from his own affidavits or the `depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file,' showing a genuine issue of fact warranting a trial. [24] Or, as Rosen put it in his brief, he would have to identify specific evidence establishing [w]hether AIPAC had standards and whether Rosen violated those standards. Rosen acknowledges, moreover, that the answers to those questions would have to be objectively verifiable. At this point, further discussion of the burdens of production and proof will be unnecessary until we have explored what the recordand especially the deposition testimonyreveals. Focusing on his central argument, Rosen stresses that the record reveals the absence of written `standards' of employee behavior that Rosen is supposed to have violated-specifically, written standards for receiving or handling classified information. Rosen is correct about the absence of written standards. According to AIPAC's Deputy Executive Director, Richard Lee Fishman, on deposition, AIPAC concedes there were no written standards for employee behavior at the time of the 2005 statement that AIPAC's 2008 statement incorporates. [25] According to Fishman, however, there was an unwritten, assumed standard that people would obey the law ... [w]ith regard to classified information or any other illegal activity. In addition, when discussing Rosen's delayed report to AIPAC's general counsel about the FBI confrontation, and later in elaborating on Rosen's secretive relationship with his DOD contact, AIPAC's Executive Director, Howard Kohr, identified two standardsadherence to counsel's advice and communication with total candoramong the unwritten standards of AIPAC employees in 2005. Thus, Rosen is left with the contention that, if the case went to trial, the evidence would yield a genuine issue of fact as to whether Rosen violated standards that were unwritten but assumed and yetto satisfy the law of defamationobjectively verifiable. [26] That contention presents this problem for Rosen: the challenged statement refers not to standards of a particular kind, identifiable in writing, but merely to standardsa general term capable of multiple meanings ( e.g., obey the law, follow counsel's advice, speak with total candor) that communicates no specific message about a discernible fact to an uninformed hearer. And that one word, standards, cannot necessarilyindeed, cannot provablybe understood to mean, for example, criteria for receiving or handling classified information. As the trial court concluded: [I]t is not clear from the statement, or the context in which it was made, that the allusion to standards AIPAC expects of its employees refers in particular to standards concerning the receipt, handling, and dissemination of classified information. The referenced standards could just as easily refer to AIPAC's expectation that its employees not be charged with crimes, or the more subjective and amorphous expectation that its employees not cause undue embarrassment. Persuasive case law supports the trial court's understanding. In McClure v. American Family Mut. Ins. Co., [27] the defendant insurance company fired two insurance agents for engaging in lobbying activities that were prejudicial to the company. As in the present case, the agents' terminations were reported to the press. The company's statements were to the effect that appellants had engaged in `disloyal and disruptive activity,' that they had not understood the `value of loyalty and keeping promises,' that they had acted `against the best interests of the insurance buying public,' that they `were in direct violation of their agreements,' and that they had engaged in `conduct unacceptable by any business standard.' [28] Such statements, the court said, are not sufficiently precise or verifiable to support a claim of defamation. [29] The court concluded, as the trial judge did here, that remarks on a subject lending itself to multiple interpretations cannot be the basis of a successful defamation action because as a matter of law no threshold showing of `falsity' is possible in such circumstances. [30] Other case law makes the same point. In Gibson v. Boy Scouts of Am., [31] the Boy Scouts revoked appellant's relationship with the organization and published a statement that he was unfit to be a Scoutmaster and in Scouts. [32] The appellant sued, among other claims, for defamation. The court held that the statement that [the appellant] was `unfit to be a Scoutmaster and in Scouts' does not contain a provably false factual connotation. [33] The court accordingly concluded that those allegedly defamatory words are merely the expression of the speaker's opinion, and do not state a claim of defamation for which relief can be granted. [34] There may have been specific incidents buried in the words used by the employers in McClure (disloyal, disruptive, loyalty, keeping promises, unacceptable, best interests) and in Gibson (unfit). And if such incidents had been mentioned in the employers' statements, those incidents might well have been challenged for their claimed veracity and the statement found to be provably false. [35] But no one learned of particular incidents from the words used. And thus no one hearing the general characterizations used by the employers could have discerned particular behaviors that were concrete enough to reveal objectively verifiable [36] falsehoods. The language in each exuded merely a subjective evaluationessentially a statement of opinion without an explicit or implicit factual foundation. [37] In the present case, as noted earlier, the event that triggered Rosen's dismissal was the recommendation of outside counsel, Nathan Lewin. After receiving confidential information from federal prosecutors involved in a publicly revealed investigation of Rosen and an AIPAC colleague, Lewin counseled AIPAC in March 2005 to fire Rosen for activity that AIPAC cannot condone. Rosen was fired a week later, followed the next month by AIPAC's statement of April 21, 2005 indirectly at issue here. After appellee Dorton made AIPAC's April 21, 2005 statement, AIPAC learned much more about Rosen, as explained above and summarized here for reference. First, it learned that on August 4, 2005, Rosen was indicted on one count of Conspiracy to Communicate National Defense Information and one count of Communication of National Defense Information. The Superceding Indictment reveals alleged criminal activity by Rosen dating back to 1999. Second, AIPAC learned from the indictment that after Rosen's verbal altercation with FBI agents at his home in August, 2004, he had not reported directly to AIPAC's general counsel after counsel had asked Rosen (in Rosen's words) to convene in the office with him. Instead, despite the obvious urgency of the situation to AIPAC, Rosen admitted on deposition that he had chosen to meet first with an Israeli embassy official at a local restaurant because of an FBI allegation extremely serious for some Israeli. Finally, AIPAC learned that Rosen had not revealed to his superiors the full extent of his relationship with his DOD contact: the U.S. government official from whom he allegedly had received classified information when the matter initially arose in 2004. Accordingly, AIPAC's statement that in 2008 it still held the view that it had expressed in 2005that Rosen's behavior `did not comport with the standards that AIPAC expects of its employees'is a statement based on significantly more information about Rosen's activities, particularly in 2004 and early 2005, than AIPAC was aware of in April 2005 when the statement was first made. This augmented file of information, based on deposition testimony, is relevant, first, to identify Rosen's pre-April 2005 behaviors which AIPAC discovered after making its April 2005 statement; and, second, to explain AIPAC's reactions to those early behaviors three years laterincluding its explanation of AIPAC's standards that generated those reactions. This deposition evidence, as elaborated earlier, reveals only unwritten, subjectivecalled assumed standards of conduct that AIPAC expected of its employees in 2005. (It also makes clear why AIPAC still held the view that it expressed in 2008.) Therefore, this deposition evidence reveals why AIPAC's March 3, 2008 statement is not provably false. [38] Whatever collection of unwritten standards AIPAC may have had in 2005, each was too subjective, too amorphous, too susceptible of multiple interpretationsas explained in our discussion of McClure and Gibson to make any of them susceptible to proof of particular, articulable content. And thus AIPAC's standardsa word of aggregation expressing an even higher level of generalitycould have meant many things, none self-evident, and certainly none specifically directed at receiving or handling classified information, Rosen's central focus in bringing this lawsuit. In arriving at our decision, we have been mindful that AIPAC had the initial burden to present evidence that Rosen had failed to prove an essential element[] of his claim. [39] We conclude that AIPAC sustained that initial burden, first, by conceding through its officers' depositions that AIPAC lacked written standards, and then by proffering, instead, the existence of various general standards that AIPAC employees are assumed to follow, such as obey the law, follow counsel's advice, speak with total candor, that by their very generality and diversity convey no particular message. AIPAC therefore cited record evidence that Rosen had not been able to show that AIPAC's statement of March 3, 2008 relied on stated facts that were `provably false.' [40] The burden then shifted to Rosen to show through the designated categories of discovery (in Rosen's case, his deposition) the `specific facts' that created a genuine issue of material fact for trial. [41] Rosen did not do so. As we have seen by quoting Rosen's responses to questions at his deposition, he either confirmed or failed to dispute the testimony that two high-ranking AIPAC officials, Richard Lee Fishman and Howard Kohr, gave to establish that AIPAC's standards for employee conduct were unwritten, capable of multiple, unspecified meanings, and thusespecially because they were identified only by one general, collective wordwere not provably false. In sum, no genuine issue of material fact remained for trial, and, for the reasons elaborated in this opinion, AIPAC is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Affirmed.