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

Heading: Bootstrapping and the Privilege of Reply

Text: The Vicinis try to avoid this conclusion by asserting that most of the above conduct is shielded by the bootstrapping taboo. The argument is as follows. All of their public activities occurred after and in response to an article in a Spanish newspaper, El Mundo, published in January 2003. The article included purportedly defamatory statements by Fr. Hartley, the original defamer, that were repeated in the film four years later. Because the Vicinis would not have entered the public arena but for the El Mundo article, the filmmakers cannot invoke the Vicinis' status as a defense to the same defamation in the film. The argument is creative, but this case does not fit the bootstrapping mold. Bootstrapping in this context occurs when the defendant relies on his own defamatory publication to manufacture a public controversy involving the plaintiff, and thus by [his] own conduct, create[s his] own defense by making the claimant a public figure. Hutchinson, 443 U.S. at 135, 99 S.Ct. 2675. That is the logic behind the requirement that public-figure status whether acquired for all purposes and in all contexts or derived from a particular controversypredate the alleged defamation. See, e.g., Gray, 221 F.3d at 251; Kassel, 875 F.2d at 941; Bruno & Stillman, 633 F.2d at 591; see generally Smolla, Law of Defamation § 2:25 (recognizing the media's potential for `bootstrapping' itself into the protection of the actual malice standard by pointing to its own coverage of the plaintiff as evidence that the plaintiff is a public figure, and that in response a number of courts have emphasized that the public controversy must `preexist' the speech giving rise to the defamation suit). Here, however, the El Mundo article did not create the batey controversy. It is undisputed, at least on appeal, that the controversy began much earlier and was in full swing before Fr. Hartley arrived in the Dominican Republic and well before the El Mundo article was published in 2003. Like the Vicinis themselves, Fr. Hartley was a voice in that controversy; he was not its creator. So even if the El Mundo article served as a blueprint for the filma claim that we think the Vicinis exaggerate [10] no bootstrapping occurred from which the filmmakers could have benefitted in this lawsuit. What the Vicinis argue, at bottom, is that their conduct fell under a so-called privilege of reply. The concept has its roots not in the First Amendment but in the common law that governed defamation suits prior to New York Times. Writ large, it allowed a defamed person to respond to the extent reasonably necessary to defend himself, even to the point of defaming his accuser. [11] Under their theory, as we understand it, the Vicinis could publicly defend themselves against defamatory statements in the El Mundo article without sacrificing their private-figure status, as long as their response was measured and reasonable. Although not in so many words, the Vicinis ask us to graft the common-law privilege of reply onto the constitutional public-figure analysis. To our knowledge only one court of appeals has explicitly taken such a step. See Foretich v. Capital Cities/ABC, Inc., 37 F.3d 1541 (4th Cir.1994). In Foretich, grandparents, accused by their daughter-in-law of molesting their infant granddaughter, made limited public comments and appearances to rebut her accusations. Id. at 1557-58 (granting requests for interviews, attending three press conferences, and appearing on two television shows). The court acknowledged that some of those rebuttals were probably intended (at least in part) to influence the outcome of the custody dispute. Id. at 1563. Nevertheless, invoking the common-law privilege of reply, the court held that the grandparents' primary motive was to defend their own good names against [her] accusations and that their public statements can most fairly be characterized as measured defensive replies to her attacks, rather than as efforts to thrust themselves to the forefront of a public controversy in order to influence its outcome. Id. We agree with Foretich in this limited sense: an individual should not risk being branded with an unfavorable status determination merely because he defends himself publicly against accusations, especially those of a heinous character. Pendleton, 156 F.3d at 68; see Firestone, 424 U.S. at 455 n. 3, 96 S.Ct. 958; accord Clyburn v. News World Commc'ns, Inc., 903 F.2d 29, 32 (D.C.Cir.1990) ([W]e have doubts about placing much weight on purely defensive, truthful statements made when an individual finds himself at the center of a public controversy but before any libel occurs; it is not clear why someone dragged into a controversy should be able to speak publicly only at the expense of foregoing a private person's protection from defamation.). [12] But that is not what happened here. Although the Vicinis claim that the El Mundo article was a call to arms, the record is clear that they took little if any action directly in response to it. Juan testified that the only action he took was to order an internal inquiry concerning one accusation; Felipe testified that he took no action whatsoever. And even if the El Mundo article had some indirect influence on their conduct over the next four years, that conduct went well beyond any reasonable measure of self-defense, as we have shown. [13]