Court Opinion

ID: 9541440
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:25:28.069387+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:02:52.246064
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE WOLFSON, specially concurring in part and dissenting in part: What could Corbitt and Giancana have had in mind when they wrote about Tuite? What did they intend their readers to understand? Could they merely have been praising Tuite’s formidable talents as a defense lawyer? I believe they intended to and did write about hoodlums who thought they had hired a lawyer who would and could do whatever was illegally necessary to fix their pending federal prosecution, including bribes and payoffs. I do not believe a reasonable reader would understand the words about Tuite to be a paean about the joys and satisfaction of hiring an expensive lawyer. The authors claimed to have written a book about “unbridled corruption.” In that context they described a million dollar payment to Tuite, in hundred dollar bills, under the cover of darkness. That made the “guys *** sort of semijubilant.” “Everybody figured Tuite had it all handled.” “To Aiuppa and his codefendants, it was like a done deal, like they were all going to be acquitted.” The reasonable reader would not take those words merely as an expression of confidence in a lawyer by his clients. That would not be very interesting. This was a case that admittedly could not be won on its merits. How else could victory he acheived? By the corrupt methods imputed to Tuite by the authors. That is libel per se. The majority takes the innocent construction rule too far. It does not apply “simply because allegedly defamatory words are ‘capable’ of an innocent construction.” Bryson v. News America Publications, Inc., 174 Ill. 2d 77, 93 (1996). In applying the rale, we must give the alleged defamatory words “their natural and obvious meaning.” Bryson, 174 Ill. 2d at 93. We must interpret the allegedly defamatory words “as they appeared to have been used and according to the idea they were intended to convey to the reasonable reader.” Bryson, 174 Ill. 2d at 93. When a defamatory meaning is clearly intended and conveyed: “this court will not strain to interpret allegedly defamatory words in their mildest and most inoffensive sense in order to hold them nonlibellous under the innocent construction rale.” Bryson, 174 Ill. 2d at 93. True, the authors used a kind of code, apparently recognizing there are legal limits to what can be said about a lawyer. But the code is transparent. The clear message is that Tuite was ready and able to fix the case, that he was paid to fix it, and that he did not deliver, something that should have caused a premature end to his life. It takes more than a “strain” to apply an innocent meaning to the offending words. It takes a gyration of Olympian proportion. Calling the plaintiff a “slut” in Bryson was defamatory because it was intended to describe her sexual proclivities, alternative innocent dictionary definitions aside. The court observed that the innocent construction rule does not require courts to strain to find an unnatural but possibly innocent meaning for the words where the defamatory meaning is far more reasonable. Bryson, 174 Ill. 2d at 94. Moreover, said the court: “Nor does it require this court to espouse a naivet unwarranted under the circumstances.” Bryson, 174 Ill. 2d at 94. We have rejected application of the innocent construction rule where the defamatory words used were less offensive than the words written about Tuite. See Parker v. House O’Lite Corp., 324 Ill. App. 3d 1014, 1025 (2001) (Mr. Parker has violated “ ‘his own specifications in rigging this bid’ ”); Moriarty v. Greene, 315 Ill. App. 3d 225, 232 (2000) (“plaintiff [psychologist] ‘readily admitted that she sees her job as doing whatever the natural parents instructed her to do’ ”); Kumaran v. Brotman, 247 Ill. App. 3d 216, 225 (1993) (noxxlawyer plaintiff was “ ‘working a scam’ by filing numerous lawsuits to extract monetary settlements on a full-time basis”). The analysis conducted in Berkos v. National Broadcasting Co., 161 Ill. App. 3d 476 (1987), should be used here. In Berkos, NBC broadcasted a story about an investigation into judicial corruption. While Berkos was not directly said to have accepted a bribe or to be a corrupt judge, his name was placed in the story about other judges taking bribes. In the overall context, said the court, “references to Berkos *** [could] be reasonably interpreted by an ordinary viewer of normal intelligence as imputing criminal involvement to Berkos.” Berkos, 161 Ill. App. 3d at 487. Otherwise, asked the court, why refer to Berkos? Here, why refer to Tuite in terms of a late-night million dollar payment, having it “all handled,” and a “done deal”? I would reverse the trial court’s section 2 — 615 dismissal of Tuite’s libel and false light counts and send them back for further proceedings. I agree with the majority that Tuite did not allege sufficient facts to support a cause of action for intentional infliction of emotional distress.