Court Opinion

ID: 9706868
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:53:46.048636+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:25.533999
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Me. Justice Coi-ien:.
The majority errs in failing to reverse the judgment and remand the case for a new trial.
The trial judge’s charge on the issue of malice was: “Now if a false statement is uttered not with the honest desire of informing the public, but for another and sinister motive and without an honest desire to impart information, you may find malice. In other words, you may find malice if you find that a defamatory statement was uttered with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not or was uttered with actual knowledge of its falsity.”
As the majority quotes New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964) the Court said at pages 279-280: “. . . ‘actual malice’ — that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” ’ ’’
The lower court’s charge only half stated’the standard. The language would enable a jury to find malice if it believed defendant was negligent with regard to truth or falsity, but had a “sinister motive.” The words “[i]n other words” create an equivalence be*570tween tlie language preceding and following the equation sign. It is just as likely that the jury followed the definition in the first half of the equation as it is that they followed the language in the second half.
Where the issue is one of whether the action sued upon was protected as within permissible constitutional limits the greatest care ought to be taken so that the jury is accurately charged. Otherwise, a defendant may be deprived of his constitutionally protected freedom. Such a denial may have resulted here. The potentiality of its having happened is, I think, sufficiently great that the error should be treated as fundamental error.
The majority also errs in finding Linn v. United Plant Guard Workers, 383 U.S. 53 (1966), inapplicable. There, the Supreme Court found that the National Labor Relations Act was not concerned with vindication of the reputation of one defamed and that the Board could not compensate him. While the Court held that the Act did not pre-empt a suit under state law for defamatory remarks made in the context of a labor dispute, it imposed the restriction on state remedies that “effective administration of national labor policy” emanating from the NLRA required the limitation of recovery to those cases where malice and damage were shown. The Court then said that it was adopting the New York Times standards.
By finding Linn inapplicable in the present context, the majority is saying that more redress for defamation must be allowed in the area of a political campaign than in the context of a labor dispute. Yet, in Linn, the Court quoted New York Times as to the policy involved: “[Cjases involving speech are to be considered ‘against the background of a profound . . . commitment to the principle that debate . . . should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasant*571ly sharp attacks.’ ” 383 TJ.S. at 62. Thus, the Court recognized that the policy of encouraging free speech is as great in politics as in labor. I personally feel that a much larger area of unrestrained comment is permissible in a political campaign.
I dissent.