Opinion ID: 618222
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Defamation and the First Amendment

Text: Before the Supreme Court's decision in New York Times, defamation law was shaped by the states and strongly favored their interest in protecting an individual's reputation. See Bruno & Stillman, Inc. v. Globe Newspaper Co., 633 F.2d 583, 586 (1st Cir.1980) (Once a plaintiff put into evidence a reputation-harming statement and proof that defendant caused it to be disseminated, he enjoyed an irrebuttable presumption of injury and a rebuttable presumption of falsity.); see generally Joel D. Eaton, The American Law of Defamation Through Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. and Beyond: An Analytical Primer, 61 Va. L.Rev. 1349, 1351-57 (1975) (surveying defamation law in the various states that existed prior to New York Times ). That balance shifted in 1964, when the Court considered whether the constitutional protections for speech and press limit a State's power to award damages in a libel action brought by a public official against critics of his official conduct. N.Y. Times, 376 U.S. at 256, 84 S.Ct. 710. Recognizing the profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, id. at 270, 84 S.Ct. 710, the Court reasoned that even falsehoods must be protected if the freedoms of expression are to have the breathing space that they need to survive, id. at 271-72, 84 S.Ct. 710 (internal quotation marks and ellipsis omitted). On that basis, the Court held that the First Amendment prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with `actual malice' that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not. Id. at 279-80, 84 S.Ct. 710. [2] The Court soon applied the New York Times rule to nonofficial public figures. Curtis Publ'g Co. v. Butts, 388 U.S. 130, 154-55, 87 S.Ct. 1975, 18 L.Ed.2d 1094 (1967). Under Curtis, a defamation plaintiff was to be considered a public figure when he commanded sufficient continuing public interest and had sufficient access to the means of counter-argument to be able to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies of the defamatory statements. Id. at 155, 87 S.Ct. 1975 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). For a time, the New York Times rule was also extended to private individuals. Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc., 403 U.S. 29, 91 S.Ct. 1811, 29 L.Ed.2d 296 (1971) (plurality opinion). According to the Rosenbloom plurality: If a matter is a subject of public or general interest, it cannot suddenly become less so merely because a private individual is involved, or because in some sense the individual did not `voluntarily' choose to become involved. The public's primary interest is in the event[.] Id. at 43, 91 S.Ct. 1811. Rather, the linchpin became simply whether the utterance involved concerns an issue of public or general concern. Id. at 44, 91 S.Ct. 1811; see also id. at 43-44, 91 S.Ct. 1811 (We honor the commitment to robust debate on public issues, which is embodied in the First Amendment, by extending constitutional protection to all discussion and communication involving matters of public or general concern, without regard to whether the persons involved are famous or anonymous.). The plurality's approach in Rosenbloom, however, was repudiated in Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 94 S.Ct. 2997, 41 L.Ed.2d 789 (1974), which established the current framework. Gertz sought an accommodation between the need to avoid self-censorship by the news media, id. at 341, 94 S.Ct. 2997, on the one hand, and the legitimate state interest underlying the law of libel, id., on the other. It did so by linking the constitutionally required showing in a defamation action to the plaintiff's status. Pendleton v. City of Haverhill, 156 F.3d 57, 67 (1st Cir.1998). Under this new model, public figures could succeed only on proof of actual malice as defined by New York Times. Gertz, 418 U.S. at 342, 94 S.Ct. 2997. As for purely private individuals, however, the states could define for themselves the appropriate standard of liability so long as minimal constitutional safeguards were met. Id. at 346-47, 94 S.Ct. 2997. [3] Gertz identified two justifications for this public-figure/private-figure dichotomy. The first, foreshadowed in Curtis, was that public figures usually enjoy significantly greater access to the channels of effective communication and hence have a more realistic opportunity to counteract false statements than private individuals normally enjoy. Gertz, 418 U.S. at 344, 94 S.Ct. 2997. Thus, [p]rivate individuals are ... more vulnerable to injury, and the state interest in protecting them is correspondingly greater. Id. The second justification, which was said to be more important, was that public figures, like public officials, have assumed roles of especial prominence in the affairs of society and must accept certain necessary consequences of that status. Id. at 344-45, 94 S.Ct. 2997. One such consequence is the risk of closer public scrutiny than might otherwise be the case. Id. at 344, 94 S.Ct. 2997; see also id. at 345, 94 S.Ct. 2997 (reasoning that a private individual has relinquished no part of his interest in the protection of his own good name, and consequently he has a more compelling call on the courts for redress of injury inflicted by defamatory falsehood). Gertz contemplated that public-figure status usually would arise in one of two ways, each with different repercussions. In one, an individual may achieve such pervasive fame or notoriety that he becomes a public figure for all purposes and in all contextsthe so-called general-purpose public figure. Id. at 351, 94 S.Ct. 2997. But far more commonly (and directly relevant in this case) an individual voluntarily injects himself or is drawn into a particular public controversy and thereby becomes a public figure for a limited range of issuesthe so-called limited-purpose public figure. Id. That limited range of issues is identified by looking to the nature and extent of an individual's participation in the particular controversy giving rise to the defamation. Gertz, 418 U.S. at 352, 94 S.Ct. 2997. [4] Guidance since Gertz has cautioned that a controversy must be more than a cause célèbre, Time, Inc. v. Firestone, 424 U.S. 448, 454, 96 S.Ct. 958, 47 L.Ed.2d 154 (1976), or a matter that attracts public attention, Wolston v. Reader's Digest Ass'n, 443 U.S. 157, 167, 99 S.Ct. 2701, 61 L.Ed.2d 450 (1979). Rather, it must be shown that `persons actually were discussing some specific question ... [and] a reasonable person would have expected persons beyond the immediate participants in the dispute to feel the impact of its resolution.' Bruno & Stillman, 633 F.2d at 591 (quoting Waldbaum v. Fairchild Publ'ns, Inc., 627 F.2d 1287, 1297 (D.C.Cir.1980)). Also, to avoid improper bootstrapping (a concept explored further below), the controversy must predate the alleged defamation. Gray v. St. Martin's Press, Inc., 221 F.3d 243, 251 (1st Cir.2000); Kassel v. Gannett Co., 875 F.2d 935, 941 (1st Cir.1989); Bruno & Stillman, 633 F.2d at 591; see also Hutchinson v. Proxmire, 443 U.S. 111, 135, 99 S.Ct. 2675, 61 L.Ed.2d 411 (1979) ([T]hose charged with defamation cannot, by their own conduct, create their own defense by making the claimant a public figure.). Once a controversy is isolated, the critical question then becomes whether the plaintiff has attempted to influence the resolution of that controversy. See, e.g., Wolston, 443 U.S. at 168, 99 S.Ct. 2701 (public figures engage the attention of the public in an attempt to influence the resolution of the issues involved or use a newsworthy event as a fulcrum to create public discussion); Firestone, 424 U.S. at 453, 96 S.Ct. 958 (public figures thrust themselves to the forefront of any particular controversy in order to influence the resolution of the issues involved in it); Pendleton, 156 F.3d at 69 (holding that the defamation plaintiff was a public figure because he voluntarily injected himself into the controversy); Bruno & Stillman, 633 F.2d at 591 (requiring a thrusting into the vortex). If so, the plaintiff is a public figure and bears the heavy, and often insurmountable, burden of proving actual malice.