Court Opinion

ID: 9455142
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:12:25.75899+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:28.501699
License: Public Domain

KILEY, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur in Judge Duffy’s opinion that this case should have gone to the jury.
It is my view that the testimony of Magnuson, referred to in Judge Duffy’s opinion, was sufficient prima facie to prove that Time published the article in suit “with knowledge that it was false.” The publication of the article with the words in the Commission report deliberately omitted could reasonably be found to be a publication of “a defamatory falsehood * * * with knowledge that it was false.” This met the test of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S.Ct. 710 (1964), under which either knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard of whether the material is false or not is required for proof of the vital element of “actual malice.” I agree that the case progeny of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan has not changed the Supreme Court’s test.
The effect of doing to the Commission report what Time did to it was to give the report an additional reader value. The Time article does not contain the various qualifications in the Commission report which Time urges upon us now with respect to the context in which the Commission treated the Monroe-Pape incident. We must consider the Time article as it was published.