Court Opinion

ID: 9680652
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:35:45.021089+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:29.866269
License: Public Domain

COOPER, Justice,
dissenting.
The right of a man to the protection of his own reputation from unjustified invasion and wrongful hurt reflects no more than our basic concept of the essential dignity and worth of every human being- — a concept at the root of any decent system of ordered liberty.
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... The destruction that defamatory falsehood can bring is, to be sure, often beyond the capacity of the law to redeem. Yet, imperfect though it is, an action for damages is the only hope for vindication or redress the law gives to a man whose reputation has been falsely dishonored.
Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U.S. 75, 92-3, 86 S.Ct. 669, 679, 15 L.Ed.2d 597 (1966) (concurring opinion of Justice Stewart).
There was a time in our history when damages to reputation were vindicated on the dueling ground. The 1804 duel at Weehawken, New Jersey, in which Alexander Hamilton was mortally wounded by Aaron Burr stemmed from Hamilton’s slander of Burr’s character. It is generally regarded that civil actions for libel and slander developed as a substitute for the duel and as a deterrent to murder. I. Brant, The Bill of Rights: Its Origin and Meaning 502 (Bobbs-Merrill Co.1965).
Though public officials and public figures are subjected to a higher standard of proof than private citizens, they are still afforded substantial protection against malicious defamation. All speech is not protected, even if directed against persons who have the temerity to seek and hold public office. See Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 341, 94 S.Ct. 2997, 3007-08, 41 L.Ed.2d 789 (1974). In ap*733proaching any action for defamation against the press or the broadcast media, it is well to remember that while a public figure is held to a higher standard of proof than a private citizen when asserting an action for defamation, the publisher or broadcaster is not held to a lower standard than a private citizen in determining whether defamation has occurred. The reason virtually all defamation actions are brought against the print and broadcast media is the devastating impact which results from the wide dissemination of published falsehoods as opposed to the single lie uttered by one person to another. Nor should we view newspapers and the broadcast media as public service corporations. Most are not. They are privately owned corporations operated for profit whose owners are well aware of the influence which they wield in the political arena. Despite this position of power and influence, they are not held to a higher standard than the individual purveyor of false information. Nor should they be held to a lower standard.
In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S.Ct. 710, 11 L.Ed.2d 686 (1964), a line was drawn between the respective burdens of proof of public officials and private citizens in actions for defamation. In New York Times, the advertisement in question was not so much a political advertisement as an appeal for financial and moral support for the civil rights movement in Alabama. In addition to extolling the righteousness of the movement and the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the advertisement contained implicit criticism of the actions of local law enforcement officials in Alabama. The advertisement was endorsed and supposedly paid for by such well known figures as Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr., Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, A. Phillip Randolph, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, and a host of movie stars and other entertainers of the day. The portion of the advertisement which was claimed to be libelous was as follows:
In Montgomery, Alabama, after students sang “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” on the State Capitol steps, their leaders were expelled from school, and truckloads of police armed with shotguns and tear-gas ringed the Alabama State College Campus. When the entire student body protested to state authorities by refusing to re-register, their dining hall was padlocked in an attempt to starve them into submission.
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Again and again the Southern violators have answered Dr. King’s peaceful protests with intimidation and violence. They have bombed his home almost killing his wife and child. They have assaulted his person. They have arrested him seven times — for “speeding,” “loitering” and similar “offenses.” And now they have charged him with “perjury”— a felony under which they could imprison him for ten years.
Id. at 305, 84 S.Ct. at 740-41.
Most of these allegations were proven to be gross exaggerations, if not complete falsehoods. Sullivan was a city commissioner of Montgomery, Alabama, who supervised the police department and claimed to have been inferentially defamed by the reference to “police” and the suggestion that Dr. King was wrongfully “arrested.” In reversing a $500,000 damage award in favor of Sullivan, the United States Supreme Court held (1) although truth is an absolute defense to an action for libel, mere falsity, ie., “erroneous statements honestly made,” does not result in absolute liability, id. at 278-79, 84 S.Ct. at 725; (2) an action for defamation of a public official must be premised upon proof of “actual malice,” ie., knowledge that the statement was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not, id. at 279-80, 84 S.Ct. at 726; (3) mere failure to investigate even its own records was not conclusive evidence of “reckless disregard,” where New York Times had relied upon the good reputations of the sponsors of the advertisement, id. at 287-88, 84 *734S.Ct. at 730; and (4) a government official cannot claim to have been inferentially libeled by the publication of an otherwise impersonal attack on governmental operations, id. at 288-92, 84 S.Ct. at 730-33.
The test for actual malice was refined in subsequent cases. In Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., supra, it was held that in order to recover for injury to reputation, a public official must prove actual malice by “clear and convincing proof.” Id. at 342, 94 S.Ct. at 3008. Reiterating that mere failure to investigate does not satisfy the burden of proof, it was held in St. Amant v. Thompson, 390 U.S. 727, 731, 88 S.Ct. 1323, 1325, 20 L.Ed.2d 262 (1968) that “[t]here must be sufficient evidence to permit the conclusion that the defendant in fact entertained serious doubts as to the truth of his publication;” and in Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64, 74, 85 S.Ct. 209, 216, 13 L.Ed.2d 125 (1964), that the standard is a subjective one — there must be sufficient evidence to permit the conclusion that the defendant actually had a “high degree of awareness of ... probable falsity....” As we noted in Ball v. E.W. Scripps Co., Ky., 801 S.W.2d 684, 689 (1990), cert. denied, 499 U.S. 976, 111 S.Ct. 1622, 113 L.Ed.2d 719 (1991), no publisher is going to confess to actual knowledge of falsity, or a high degree of awareness of probable falsity, or serious doubts as to the truth of the publication. However, such facts can be proven by circumstantial evidence. Id.; Harte-Hanks Communications, Inc. v. Connaughton, 491 U.S. 657, 688, 109 S.Ct. 2678, 2686, 105 L.Ed.2d 562 (1989). Specifically, when reporting the allegations of a third party, “recklessness may be found where there are obvious reasons to doubt the veracity of the informant or the accuracy of his reports.” Harte-Hanks Communications, Inc. v. Connaughton, supra, 491 U.S. at 688, 109 S.Ct. at 2696 (quoting St. Amant v. Thompson, supra, 390 U.S. at 732, 88 S.Ct. at 1326). Furthermore, “[ajlthough failure to investigate will not alone support a finding of actual malice, ... the purposeful avoidance of the truth is in a different category.” Id. at 692, 109 S.Ct. at 2698.
Relying on the United States Supreme Court’s then recent decision in Harte-Hanks Communications, Inc. v. Connaughton, supra, we held in Warford v. Lexington Herald-Leader Co., Ky., 789 S.W.2d 758 (1990), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 1047, 111 S.Ct. 754, 112 L.Ed.2d 774 (1991) that while failure to investigate before publishing is not itself sufficient to establish “reckless disregard,” it is probative of malice when coupled with other evidence, id. at 772; that actual knowledge of potential harm heightens the responsibility to investigate and the failure to do so may be considered evidence of malice, id.; and that the construction of statements or incidents in favor of the most potentially damaging alternative “creates a jury question on whether the publication was indeed made without serious doubt as to its truthfulness.” Id. at 773 (quoting Rebozo v. Washington Post Co., 637 F.2d 375, 382 (5th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 964, 102 S.Ct. 504, 70 L.Ed.2d 379 (1981)).
Here are some of the things the advertisement published by The Daily News had to say about Appellant, who was then the mayor of Middlesboro:
/ The City is Broke Because of His Management.
/ The City Has Not Paid Its Bills For August, September & October.
/ Legal Fees Have Exceeded $200,000 in the last 3 years.
/ Employees Have Been Paid Almost $100,000 because of Political Firings.
/ Frog Has Squandered Over 1-1/2 Million Dollars in Surplus Money.
/ Council Members Have Been Physically Attacked.
The advertisement also reprinted excerpts from news articles in past editions of The Daily News. Some examples:
Mayor’s action illegal.
Mayor grabs councilman Gandy by the throat.
*735KSP probing allegations of misconduct.
The advertisement concluded with a plea to readers to elect Appellant’s opponent in the upcoming mayoral election. That plea included the following:
Don’t be fooled by the smoke screen and lies. Think before you vote and wonder why Frog and his cronies are working so hard to get rid of people who have stood in his way and called his hand on illegal activities. FROG WAS SUCCESSFUL IN RUNNING OFF 62 SEPARATE COUNCIL MEMBERS IN DISGUST. (Emphasis in original.)
Although the advertisement states that it was paid for by Paul Douglas Hall, it was Jimmy Pursiful, Jr., who actually came to The Daily News and requested assistance in preparing the advertisement. The employee who assisted him was Carla Sue Bennett. Although she had seen Pur-siful in the community, Bennett did not know him. Neither she nor the newspaper’s publisher, J.T. Hurst, purported to rely on the reputations of Pursiful and Hall with respect to the accuracy of the allegations in the advertisement. Compare New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, supra. Bennett testified that Pursiful prepared most of the material before he arrived at her office and that she merely directed him to bound volumes of old editions of The Daily News from which he selected the headlines and excerpts which were included in the advertisement. Pur-siful testified that he was but a courier from Hall and that Bennett researched and prepared the material contained in the advertisement. It should be noted in passing that it is immaterial that some of the matter contained in the advertisement was a republication of allegations contained in previous editions of The Daily News. If the allegations were libelous when originally published, they were equally libelous when republished. Warford v. Lexington Herald-Leader Co., supra, at 772.
A writing is defamatory if it tends to (1) bring a person into public hatred, contempt or ridicule; (2) cause him to be shunned or avoided; or (3) injure him in his business or occupation. McCall v. Courier-Journal and Louisville Times Co., Ky., 623 S.W.2d 882, 884 (1981), cert. denied, 456 U.S. 975, 102 S.Ct. 2239, 72 L.Ed.2d 849 (1982). Allegedly defamatory words “must be measured by them natural and probable effect on the mind of the average lay reader and not be subjected to the critical analysis of the legal mind.” Id. When criminal activity is alleged, the publication is libelous per se. Columbia Sussex Corp., Inc. v. Hay, Ky.App., 627 S.W.2d 270 (1981); 50 Am.Jur.2d Libel and Slander § 165 (1995). The same is true with respect to allegations which impugn one’s competence, capacity, or fitness in the performance of his profession, trade, or business. 50 Am.Jur.2d Libel and Slander § 212 (1995). One who attains public office does not thereby become the deer in the headlights of the tabloid press. “Even privilege has its limitations and even a public figure in the midst of a political campaign is entitled to some degree of protection.” Silsdorf v. Levine, 59 N.Y.2d 8, 462 N.Y.S.2d 822, 449 N.E.2d 716, 721 (1983), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 831, 104 S.Ct. 109, 78 L.Ed.2d 111 (1983). In Silsdorf, false statements that a mayor’s administration was corrupt, that it paid to do business with the mayor, and that the mayor was profiting in his law practice at the village’s expense, were held actionable because such statements were capable of being interpreted by the average reader as charging the mayor with illegal conduct while in office. Id.
If false, the statements in the advertisement in question in this case were cleaiiy libelous. To the majority opinion’s assertion that allegations that the “city is broke” and that Appellant has “squandered over 1-1/2 million dollars” are not libelous because those statements defy precise definition, I would respond that anyone who does not know the meaning of “broke” has never been there. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged) (Merriam-Webster, Inc.1993) *736defines “broke” as “without money or resources, penniless, bankrupt,” i.e., precisely how the average lay reader would define it. The same source defines “squander” as “to spend extravagantly or foolishly, especially to the point of depletion” or “to spend in a wasteful manner,” also precisely how the average lay reader would define it. Regardless, we laid this issue to rest in Yancey v. Hamilton, Ky., 786 S.W.2d 854 (1990), in which we held that if “the words at issue are capable of more than one meaning ... the jury should decide which of the meanings a recipient of the message would attribute to it.” Id. at 858.
Having determined that the advertisement was facially defamatory, the remaining issues are whether the statements in the advertisement were false and whether there was sufficient evidence of actual malice to avoid summary judgment. Appellant testified by deposition that most of the accusations made in the advertisement were false. There is little, if any, evidence in this record to the contrary; and, for purposes of summary judgment, the trial court was required to accept Appellant’s testimony in that regard. CR 56.03; Steelvest, Inc. v. Scansteel Service Center, Inc., Ky., 807 S.W.2d 476, 480 (1991). I reject the majority opinion’s suggestion that a higher summary judgment standard exists in defamation cases because of First Amendment implications. The higher standard relates to the plaintiffs ultimate burden of proof at trial. A motion for summary judgment is not equivalent to a motion for directed verdict. On motion for summary judgment, the burden is on the movant to prove the nonexistence of an issue of material fact. The respondent is not required to try his case in response to the motion. Steelvest, supra, at 482-83.
There is ample circumstantial evidence from which a reasonable jury could find clear and convincing proof of actual malice in this case. Unlike New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, supra, the newspaper here did not rely on the good reputation of the sponsors of the advertisement. The employee who prepared the advertisement did not even know the person whom she claimed furnished the defamatory information. However, she must at least have assumed that Hall and Pursiful were supporting Appellant’s political opponent in the upcoming election, and, thus, that they might well have been motivated to falsely accuse him of wrongdoing. Remember, when reporting the allegations of a third party, “recklessness may be found where there are obvious reasons to doubt the veracity of the informant or the accuracy of his reports.” Harte-Hanks Communications, Inc. v. Connaughton, supra, 491 U.S. at 688, 109 S.Ct. at 2696 (quoting St. Amant v. Thompson, supra, 390 U.S. at 732, 88 S.Ct. at 1326). Appellant points out that the newspaper must have known that he could not have been “successful in running off 62 separate council members in disgust,” because there had not been sixty-two members of the city council during his seven year tenure as mayor. Remember, “[although failure to investigate will not alone support a finding of actual malice, ... the purposeful avoidance of the truth is in a different category.” Id., 491 U.S. at 692, 109 S.Ct. at 2698.
J.T. Hurst, publisher of The Daily News, testified that truthfulness was a concern when deciding whether to publish any political advertisement, but that he was unconcerned about the truthfulness of the accusations in this particular advertisement. Certainly, the nature of the accusations were sufficient to put him on notice of their potential harm to Appellant; thus, the failure to investigate was at least evidence of malice. Warford, v. Lexington Herald-Leader Co., supra, at 772. Hurst also testified that it was the newspaper’s policy never to prepare copy for political advertisements. Yet, Pursiful testified that Bennett not only prepared the copy, but researched the newspaper’s back issues and selected the unfavorable headlines and excerpts used in the advertisement. In view of that evidence, Bennett’s failure to further investigate the same *737source to determine whether the accusations which she placed in the advertisement were true “creates a jury question on whether the publication was indeed made without serious doubt as to its truthfulness.” Id. at 773 (quoting Rebozo v. Washington Post Co., 637 F.2d 375, 382 (5th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 964, 102 S.Ct. 504, 70 L.Ed.2d 379 (1981)). Hurst further testified that it was the newspaper’s policy not to accept political advertisements raising new issues after a specified cut-off date, so that the opposing candidate would have an opportunity to respond to the new allegations. In this case, the cut-off date was October 25,1993. This advertisement was published on October 30, 1993 and again on November 1, 1993, the day before the election. Hurst’s explanation of this apparent deviation from policy was that “[tjhere were no new issues in the ad.” While that may have been true with respect to the excerpts from previous editions of the newspaper, it was not true with respect to allegations that “the city is broke,” that “legal fees have exceeded $200,000 in the last three years,” that, “employees have been paid almost $100,000 because of political firings,” that Appellant “has squandered over 1-1/2 million dollars” of the city’s money, and that Appellant “was successful in running off 62 separate council members in disgust.”
In summary, there was evidence that the publication of this advertisement was in violation of two of the newspaper’s own policies, that the publisher was unconcerned whether the obviously scandalous accusations contained in the advertisement were true, and that the advertisement was either researched and prepared by the newspaper’s own staff or was published at the request of persons whose motives for veracity the newspaper had ample reason to doubt. This was sufficient circumstantial evidence of actual malice to submit this case to a properly instructed jury.
The majority opinion, as did the trial judge, mistakenly concludes that the newspaper should be held to a lower standard in this case because the alleged defamation was published in a political advertisement rather than a news story. In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, supra, the plaintiff, Sullivan, argued that a higher standard should be imposed in the case of a political advertisement, because publication was prompted by a motive for profit rather than a motive to communicate information. That argument was rejected. “[I]f the allegedly libelous statements would otherwise be constitutionally protected from the present judgment, they do not forfeit that protection because they were published in the form of a paid advertisement.” Id., 376 U.S. at 266, 84 S.Ct. at 719. It is preposterous to suggest that a lower standard should be applied when a newspaper publishes allegedly libelous material for profit. This is but an alternative version of the defense of “neutral reportage” which we soundly rejected in McCall v. Courier-Journal and Louisville Times Co., supra, at 886-87.
Much is made of the fact that Appellant was unable to identify any special damages other than his failure to win reelection as mayor of Middlesboro. However, in this type of case, “actual injury is not limited to out-of-pocket loss. Indeed, the more customary types of actual harm inflicted by defamatory falsehood include impairment of reputation and standing in the community, personal humiliation, and mental anguish and suffering.” Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., supra, 418 U.S. at 350, 94 S.Ct. at 3012. If the defamatory material is libelous per se, neither allegation nor proof of special damages is required. They are conclusively presumed. Tucker v. Kilgore, Ky., 388 S.W.2d 112, 116 (1965).
Long ago, we abandoned the dueling ground in favor of the courtroom for redress for the malicious destruction of one’s good name. As we enter the third decade of the “attack ad” era of Kentucky politics, we should not forget why the common law action for defamation was created in the first place. Unfortunately, the majority *738opinion in this case substantially diminishes the legal remedy available to victims of defamation by establishing a burden of proof that is impossible to meet. Today, we essentially hold that the reputation of a public official is fair game for those who stand to benefit from its destruction, and that one who seeks or accepts public office thereby forfeits the right to legal redress for injuries inflicted by malicious liars. I do not believe that to be the state of the law or what the law should be. For that reason, I would reverse the Court of Appeals and remand this case to the Bell Circuit Court for a trial on the merits.
GRAVES, J., joins this dissenting opinion.