Opinion ID: 1601643
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: defamation on the basis of implications from true facts

Text: I find it useful to begin by noting the issues which the parties do not raise on this appeal. Most significantly, plaintiffs have conceded the truth  or at least that they are unable to prove the material falsity  of all the specific factual statements contained in the four disputed articles. Plaintiffs' claim, in a nutshell, is that the articles, taken as a whole, nevertheless conveyed to the average reader certain vague, overall implications which plaintiffs claim to be false. These alleged implications, as defined by plaintiffs themselves, boil down to the proposition that plaintiffs are Mafia. [5] Defendants, for their part, do not challenge the jury verdict on the ground that plaintiffs failed to prove the requisite degree of fault, nor do they challenge the finding that plaintiffs are private rather than public figures. Defendants' defense is essentially one of truth. Defendants both deny that the implications of which plaintiffs complain can fairly be said to arise from the articles, and contend in any event that, given the conceded truth of the specific factual statements, any overall implications which do arguably arise therefrom are necessarily privileged as implications from true facts. Plaintiffs' claim is thus vastly different from the more typical or familiar defamatory implication claim. Plaintiffs do not allege that any particular factual statement by defendants is reasonably susceptible of conveying a specific factual implication which is provably false. Nor do they contend that defendants, by selectively omitting crucial relevant facts, have conveyed any misleading factual implication on the basis of otherwise true statements. Rather, they contend that a collection of concededly true factual statements amounts to false defamation because of the inferential or speculative conclusions that the average reader might draw from the totality of those statements. Thus, while it is undoubtedly true, as a general matter, that defamatory implications may be potentially actionable if provably false, the case law cited by plaintiffs reiterating that familiar principle is ultimately inapposite and unhelpful. I believe the issue in this case, properly framed, is best analyzed by recourse to those cases which have addressed the somewhat elusive problem of defamation by implications from true facts. While this difficult area of defamation law has not yet been fully explored  and I have no pretensions that this Court can or should presume to offer any definitive solutions today  a number of cases have set forth useful and persuasive analyses of the issue. Perhaps the leading case is Strada v Connecticut Newspapers, Inc, 193 Conn 313, 323; 477 A2d 1005 (1984), where the plaintiff [sought] to recover from a publication where all the underlying and stated facts [were] proved to be true, or substantially true, claiming that the `slant' of the article [gave] rise to allegedly false and defamatory implications. In a thoughtful and carefully analyzed opinion, the Connecticut Supreme Court concluded that [t]he goal of nurturing a free and active press in the political arena mandates denial of recovery by a public figure where the allegation of defamation `depends fundamentally on an interpretation of various aspects of the broadcast, not on anything directly said in it.' Id. When any inference or innuendo does not arise from the omission of material facts, but rather from the editorial choice of layout, the plaintiff may not recover for libel by innuendo. The media would be unduly burdened if, in addition to reporting facts about public officers and public affairs correctly, it had to be vigilant for any possibly defamatory implication arising from the report of those true facts. [ Id. at 326.] It is true that Strada involved the alleged defamation of a public figure, and the court suggested at some point that its rule should be limited to that category of cases. I believe, however, that the gist of Strada 's reasoning, if not necessarily its precise contours, properly applies to this case, which, although involving private-figure plaintiffs, involves speech of public concern. [6] I find highly instructive the reasoning of Woods v Evansville Press Co, Inc, 791 F2d 480 (CA 7, 1986). The court in Woods, while conceding that implied defamatory statements may be actionable, and even assuming for purposes of analysis that the article there at issue could reasonably be read to contain the defamatory implications ascribed to it by the plaintiff in that case, see id. at 486, held that requiring a publisher to guarantee the truth of all the inferences a reader might reasonably draw from a publication would undermine the uninhibited, open discussion of matters of public concern. A publisher reporting on matters of general or public interest cannot be charged with the intolerable burden of guessing what inferences a jury might draw from an article and ruling out all possible false and defamatory innuendoes that could be drawn from the article. [ Id. at 487-488.] The court in Strada cited a case also discussed by my Brother BRICKLEY, Memphis Publishing Co v Nichols, 569 SW2d 412 (Tenn, 1978), which addressed a claim of defamation by implication from true facts. See ante, pp 124-126. I agree with my colleague that Nichols does not support plaintiffs' claim in this case. Indeed, I think the differences between the claims in Nichols and this case are very illustrative. The plaintiff in Nichols was a gunshot victim who alleged that she was falsely defamed by an article describing the shooting, which occurred at the victim's home. The female assailant's husband was present in the victim's home at the time of the shooting, and he was also fired upon. The defendant newspaper published those facts, which were true as far as they went, but failed to report that the victim's own husband, as well as two other neighbors, were also present at the time, and that the group was simply conversing in the living room. By omitting those crucial relevant facts, the article, while technically true, directly and misleadingly implied that the victim and the assailant's husband were caught in an illicit, adulterous relationship. See id. at 414, 419. As the court held: The proper question is whether the meaning reasonably conveyed by the published words is defamatory.... The publication of the complete facts could not conceivably have led the reader to conclude that [the plaintiff] and [the assailant's husband] had an adulterous relationship. The published statement, therefore, so distorted the truth as to make the entire article false and defamatory. [ Id. at 420. Emphasis in original.] In this case, by contrast, there is no claim that defendants, by omitting crucial relevant facts, conveyed any skewed or misleading implications. The implications of which plaintiffs complain are simply the ordinary and natural implications that might be expected to flow from the specific factual statements published by defendants, whether taken separately or together. While many of those statements were undoubtedly defamatory, in that they had a tendency to injure the reputations of plaintiffs, they were also concededly true. While the overall implications allegedly conveyed by the articles as a whole may also have been defamatory, their thrust was not misleading or different in kind from that of the concededly true specific statements. Rather, the implications, if any, simply reflected the accumulated thrust of the concededly true stated facts. It logically follows that such implications  even if not themselves capable of being either verified or disproven  would necessarily be protected by the same defense of truth shielding the specific factual statements. This is simply not a case, like Nichols, where the separate factual ingredients of the publication add up to more than the sum of their parts, to the extent that a collection of true facts, by the omission of crucial associated facts, ends up conveying an actionably false implication. True facts, whatever their implications, cannot become actionable simply because they are collected and published together in a straightforward manner. [7] It is significant that plaintiffs, while conceding the truth of all the specific, concrete factual statements in the disputed articles, define the allegedly false implications in exceedingly broad and vague terms. Plaintiffs have been unable to define those implications any more specifically than in terms of the vague and perhaps undefinable proposition that they are Mafia. Yet, while they strenuously assert the general falsity of that proposition, they have not disputed the essential truth of all of defendants' concrete assertions regarding their specific activities and financial ties to commonly-reputed organized-crime figures. [8] Plaintiffs have conceded that they appear on the lists of organized-crime suspects maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Indeed, plaintiff Locricchio conceded, in an interview before the disputed articles were even published, that rumors of plaintiffs' ties to organized crime and investigations of them by numerous law enforcement agencies had already become so persistent that he feared his own mother might suspect him. None of this, of course, necessarily establishes that plaintiffs are Mafia  however that elusive concept may be defined. I would not presume to speculate, and this Court need not decide, whether plaintiffs are Mafia. It is noteworthy that defendant reporter Michael Wendland stated at trial his belief  which he believed to be consistent with the content and thrust of the disputed articles  that plaintiffs themselves were not directly involved in organized crime, although he believed that organized-crime figures were indirectly involved in financing the Pine Knob development. It is to be hoped, of course, that the average, fair-minded reader would stick to the concededly true facts as presented in the disputed articles, and avoid leaping to speculative or unwarranted conclusions about plaintiffs. But it simply acknowledges human nature to observe that there is no way to guarantee or control what any reader may infer, speculate, or conclude on the basis of facts of which he is made aware. For purposes of this case, it is enough to conclude, as a matter of law, that a defamation defendant cannot be held liable for the reader's possible inferences, speculations, or conclusions, where the defendant has not made or directly implied any provably false factual assertion, and has not, by selective omission of crucial relevant facts, misleadingly conveyed any false factual implication. In sum, the overall implications that may flow from true factual statements straightforwardly presented are ordinarily as privileged for defamation purposes as the statements themselves. Any other conclusion, in my view, would unacceptably inhibit the free reporting of news and information of public concern. [9]