Court Opinion

ID: 9452167
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:31:48.793163+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:05.738238
License: Public Domain

McGOWAN, Circuit Judge:
I concur in the result reached by Judge Wright, and in • Parts I and II of his opinion. The inadequacies of the Keogh affidavit under Rule 56(e), Fed.R.Civ. P., leave the record in a state where there are only the columns themselves to be measured against the unimpeached assertions by the Post editorial personnel that they had, on reading the columns prior to publication, no reason to believe that they were false in any respect. This does not suggest a quantum of proof remotely approaching “the high degree of awareness of * * * probable falsity demanded by New York Times * * which the Supreme Court said in Garrison was essential to the successful maintenance by public officials of either civil or criminal actions for libel. The question before us essentially is: With the proof in this state, would Keogh have been entitled to get to the jury on the issue of a reckless disregard of the matter of truth or falsity?
Although the circumstances of the Supreme Court’s rescue of the New York Times from the rigors of the law of libel as it was applied in Alabama have little resemblance to the setting of this case, the Court has appeared to persist in foreshortening very greatly the access of public officials to the jury in defamation claims. In a case like this, where the plaintiff has not made an effective tender of any evidence — other than the alleged libels themselves — bearing upon reckless disregard, I do not believe that the present decisions leave room for what could, at best, be sheer speculation by the jury on that issue.
WILBUR K. MILLER, Senior Circuit Judge, dissents.