Opinion ID: 2025227
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Verdict for CN

Text: Having established that the jury's verdict in favor of Bob Wilson is supportable and that the directed verdict in favor of Carl Young was proper, we next turn to the contention that the jury's verdict in favor of the corporate defendant, CN, was against the manifest weight of the evidence. A corporation's liability for slander or libel is based on the doctrine of respondeat superior; a corporation is jointly and severally liable for libelous statements actionable against its employee when the employee is acting within the scope of his employment. ( Windsor Lake, Inc. v. WROK (1968), 94 Ill. App.2d 403; Randall Dairy Co. v. Pevely Dairy Co. (1934), 274 Ill. App. 474. See also Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (7th Cir.1982), 680 F.2d 527, 539 & n. 19 (imputing an agent's actual malice to the corporate defendant).) We cannot, however, circumvent the actual-malice requirement in this case by pooling all of the information arguably within the knowledge of various employees and imputing all of that knowledge to the corporate defendant to establish that the corporate defendant acted with actual malice. This is what plaintiff seems to be asking us to do, pointing out the various items of information which at some point were known (or may have been known) to different employees. In our view, before a corporate defendant may be found liable under the actual-malice standard, there must be a finding that at least one agent or employee involved in publishing the material acted with actual malice. As already discussed, defendant has not established that either Wilson or Young acted with actual malice. We also believe (as discussed below) that there was insufficient evidence to necessitate a finding that any other employee involved acted with actual malice. The other employees somewhat involved in the publications at issue include Randy Kirk and Ronald Dillman. The evidence established that Randy Kirk, city editor at the time of the publications in issue, had heard a flurry of rumors in 1970 and 1971 about various officers being involved in burglaries. He had heard some specific names mentioned, and Reed's name was not among them. In 1976 or 1977 an undisclosed source gave CN particular names and dates regarding particular burglaries, which information was passed along to Kirk. Still, Reed's name was never mentioned to Kirk. In fact, Kirk acknowledged that Reed's name was never mentioned to Kirk before release of the grand jury report. Kirk's knowledge that certain individuals were allegedly involved, in conjunction with the fact that Reed's name was not mentioned to him, does not, in our view, amount to such clear and convincing evidence that a jury would be required to find that Kirk acted with actual malice. This is particularly true in view of the undisputed evidence that, upon seeing the long list of officers listed in the draft of Bob Wilson's December 21, 1978, article, Kirk explicitly instructed Wilson to verify the names with the State's Attorney's office, and that Wilson later reported to Kirk that he had done so. Nor, in our view, does the failure to do any further checking into this same issue before allowing the follow-up story necessarily establish actual malice on Kirk's part. Kirk supervised 12 reporters, and there is no evidence that he undertook or should have undertaken the task of verifying all of the facts in a story  a task which the testimony indicates was primarily left to the individual reporters. Ron Dillman, the executive editor at the time the articles in issue were published, was kept abreast of the stories' contents. He gave uncontradicted testimony that he directed Kirk to verify the facts in the December 21, 1978, story. In view of this evidence, we fail to see how the jury could be required to find that Dillman acted with actual malice. Nor do we believe that his failure to do any additional investigation before allowing follow-up stories to be published necessarily indicates actual malice. Dillman was in charge of overseeing the newspaper's entire operation; it is simply not realistic to expect Dillman to have verified the role of each officer who his reporter stated was implicated. In reviewing the jury's conclusions regarding lack of malice, we have found that the circuit court failed to submit any jury instructions as to one of the December 21, 1978, articles, namely, the article which contained no by-line but to which Carl Young admittedly contributed. Perhaps the parties understood that since there was no proof of any other CN employee's involvement in this article, and since a verdict was directed for Carl Young, there was no need to submit an instruction on this article to the jury. The record is completely unclear on why this particular December 21 article was dropped from deliberation, and the parties have not addressed this occurrence. In any event, it is clear that if there were any error in failing to have the jury make an explicit finding regarding this article, the error was waived by failure to object at trial. (See Western Casualty & Surety Co. v. Brochu (1985), 105 Ill.2d 486, 500.) It is equally clear that any such error was harmless. The reason is that the only individuals (other than Carl Young) arguably shown to be involved in this second December 21, 1978, article were as much (if not more) involved in the other December 21 article, which contained the same allegedly libelous statement that plaintiff had been implicated in burglaries. The jury's having found no malice with respect to the first December 21 article, it is manifest that the jury was equally unconvinced of malice with regard to the second December 21 article.