Court Opinion

ID: 9467795
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:57:01.016002+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:32.300681
License: Public Domain

JOHN W. PECK, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The majority offers no convincing reasons in law or policy for extending to NBC the protection of the New York Times privilege of freedom from liability for defamatory statements made without “malice.” Forty years after the events that made Mrs. Street famous (or infamous), the purposes behind the legal distinction (not the every*1247day distinction) between public figures and private individuals are served only by ranking Mrs. Street among the latter.
The majority exalts “robust debate on social issues.” So do we all. If that were the only interest of weight in defamation and privacy cases, there would be no need to distinguish between public figures and private persons in our law. It would be much better to apply the New York Times “malice” test in all cases; yet it is no mystery why this is not our rule of law.
The Constitution does not protect damaging misstatements of fact because of their intrinsic worth. “[Tjhere is no constitutional value in false statements of fact.” Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 340, 94 S.Ct. 2997, 3007, 41 L.Ed.2d 789 (1974). False reports are protected because they are “inevitable in free debate.” Id. The inevitability of demonstrable error lessens with the passage of time. Accordingly, when the pressures of contemporaneous reporting subside, the need for the protection of the “malice” standard disappears. A negligence1 standard is enough. I would follow the reasoning of Justices Blackmun and Marshall, and hold that the passage of time can extinguish public figure status. See Wolston v. Reader’s Digest Ass’n, Inc., 443 U.S. 157, 169-72, 99 S.Ct. 2701, 2708-10, 61 L.Ed.2d 450 (1979) (concurring opinion).
The majority adopts the rule, not that public figure status is eternal, but that it persists as long as the public controversy that gave rise to it. For my brethren, Scottsboro persists as a public controversy because the trials have taken on “an overlay of political meaning.” In short, Mrs. Street is a public figure today because the majority thinks the Scottsboro affair merits public attention. This reasoning resurrects the “newsworthiness” test for applying the “malice” standard in defamation cases — a test proposed by a plurality of the Supreme Court in Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc., 403 U.S. 29 (1971), and rejected by a majority of the Court in Gertz. It is not the business of judges to decide “what information is relevant to self-government.” Gertz, supra, 418 U.S. at 346, 94 S.Ct. at 3010 (quoting Justice Marshall’s dissent in Ro-senbloom ).
Gertz put an end to the binary system where defamatory publications either enjoyed the protection of the “malice” standard or suffered the strict liability imposed by the common law. The majority ignores the distinctions drawn in Gertz and casts the issues of this case in terms of speech versus suppression of speech. This perception also overlooks the basic distinction in tort law between compensation and punishment. Although under Gertz and current Tennessee law Mrs. Street could recover actual damages upon showing falsity,2 negligence, causation and injury, she could not receive punitive damages without proving *1248“malice.” See, e. g., Gertz at 418 U.S. 349, 94 S.Ct. at 3011; Maheu v. Hughes Tool Co., 569 F.2d 459 (9th Cir. 1977); Davis v. Schuchat, 510 F.2d 731 (D.C.Cir.1975). Thus Mrs. Street’s status as a public or private person determines only what she must prove to show a prima facie entitlement to compensatory damages. It does not determine whether the law may “punish” historians for error, or prohibit them from committing error.
By making a plaintiff’s status hinge on its determination of the significance of a defendant’s speech, the majority pushes the Court into a quagmire where the law of defamation is standardless, easily manipulated, and no more speech-protective than the judges who happen to be applying it. The better approach is to take the distinction between public and private figures back to its roots, and examine the present status of the plaintiff in light of the reasons behind the distinction, as did Justices Black-mun and Marshall in Wolston. See 443 U.S. at 170-72,99 S.Ct. at 2709-2710 (concurring opinion).
The First Amendment affords less protection to the reputations of public figures not because news of them is deemed significant but because they can more easily rebut falsehoods in public media, and because they have as a rule assumed the risk of public commentary. In short, the law encourages and expects those labeled public figures to be uninhibited, robust debaters. See Wolston, supra, 443 U.S. at 164, 99 S.Ct. at 2706; Gertz, supra, 418 U.S. at 344, 94 S.Ct. at 3009. This is too much to expect of the plaintiff today. Over forty years ago, the prominence Mrs. Street gained through the Scottsboro trials allowed her to speak through public media. She was unquestionably a public figure in the current legal sense. Today her voice cannot rebut network “docudramas,” which literally reach the entire nation in “gripping” displays. Few people assume the risk that the most personal aspects of their lives will be presented to the nation as dramatic entertainments. The majority hold that Mrs. Street assumed that risk by her involvement in an unspecified number of interviews over forty years ago.
When NBC broadcast “Judge Horton,” Mrs. Street was not only not a public figure, she was a nonentity. Dr. Carter, historian and author of the book on which “Judge Horton” was loosely based, had been unable to trace Mrs. Street, and had described her death in some detail.3 The majority offers no convincing reason why those who would write of her today should not be liable for damages caused by their failure to make reasonable efforts to get their facts straight.
Gertz and its progeny compel the conclusion that public figure status is determined by looking at a plaintiff’s media power or public involvement at the time of the alleged defamation. I know of no case holding a person as presently obscure as Mrs. Street a public figure. Of the cases offered by the majority in support of its contrary position, the only one that is remotely similar to the present case4 and that has not *1249been superseded5 or reversed6 is Meeropol v. Nizer, 560 F.2d 1061 (2d Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1013, 98 S.Ct. 727, 54 L.Ed.2d 756 (1978). The majority opinion notes Meeropol as one of the cases that assumes “sub silentio” that public figure status endures with the controversy giving rise to it. After considering the public figure question, the Court in Meeropol added:
[E]ven if we assumed arguendo that Robert and Michael Meeropol were not “public figures” at the time this book was published, the book could not have defamed them or invaded their privacy since the book never referred to them by the Meeropol name or in any way linked the Rosenbergs to the Meeropols.
560 F.2d at 1068. Thus, whatever the Meeropol Court said about public figure status was irrelevant to its holding. Since the Court did not provide the reasoning behind its earlier assumption that the Meer-opols were public figures, see 560 F.2d 1066, this dictum carries no persuasive force.
II
NBC broadcast “Judge Horton” not once but twice. Nothing in the record shows that the network was even negligent in the first broadcast: the best available information from the leading scholar on the Scotts-
boro incident was that Victoria Price Street was dead.
After the first broadcast, Mrs. Street brought a defamation action against NBC and sought an injunction against republication of the program. The district court wisely refused to issue such an injunction. Mrs. Street’s complaint vaguely alleged that NBC’s program presented a false, sensationalized picture of her, but gave no examples of false statements in the program. Nothing in the record allows the inference that agents of NBC’s did in fact seriously doubt the truth of any specific factual presentation in “Judge Horton.” I therefore fully agree with the majority’s conclusion that no jury question of “malice” existed under the subjective New York Times standard.
Yet under the objective, “ordinarily prudent person” standard that the courts of Tennessee apply in defamation actions brought by private persons,7 a jury could readily conclude that NBC was negligent in its second broadcast of “Judge Horton.” NBC’s counsel admitted at trial that no one at NBC compared the transcripts of the 1933 Patterson trial with the parts of the movie purporting to reenact that trial. Dr. Carter and the screenwriter of “Judge Horton” testified that no one at NBC discussed *1250Mrs. Street’s charges of falsity with them. NBC might have chosen to rely on the conclusions in Dr. Carter’s historical work, but a jury would be permitted to determine whether this reliance was unreasonable in light of Dr. Carter’s testimony that parts of “Judge Horton” find no support whatsoever in Dr. Carter’s history.
My fundamental disagreement with the majority concerns the constitutionality of permitting states to impose liability for negligence in defamation cases where the pressures of contemporaneous reporting are totally absent. The majority argues that different pressures work on historians, since “the distance of years does not necessarily make more data available to a reporter: memories fade; witnesses forget; sources disappear.” Obviously, a negligence standard does not expect a writer to discover what is forever lost. When truth is unknowable, falsity, and hence defamation,8 cannot be proven.
Ill
The majority’s unstated assumption is that application of the New York Times “malice” standard necessarily creates “breathing space” for uninhibited speech.
Yet a publisher’s decision to print or broadcast a libelous story is only partly influenced by the probability of winning or losing a lawsuit. While the publication decision involves a complex calculus, the salient cost factors are likely to be the probability that the publisher will be sued, and the cost of defending if suit is brought. Rules affecting the publisher’s ultimate liability are thus likely to be marginal considerations in the decision to publish.
L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 12-13 at 643 (1978). Since no evidentiary privilege protects the editorial process, Herbert v. Lando, 441 U.S. 153, 159-67, 99 S.Ct. 1635, 1639-44, 60 L.Ed.2d 115 (1979), litigation costs are not likely to vary with the application of New York Times “malice” or Gertz “fault” rules. In the present case, the district court did not decide the question of Mrs. Street’s status until the close of all proof. Had this action been brought after Lando, and had the trial judge (contrary to his actual ruling) early in the trial held Mrs. Street a public figure, the evidence (and outcome) in the trial might have been different, but it is incredible that either the hypothetical or the actual outcomes would significantly influence future publishing decisions. Invocation of New York Times v. Sullivan does not exorcise what to the majority is the demon of self-censorship. Only abolition of the torts of defamation and invasion of privacy can do that, and that abolition is a price measured in individual dignity that our Constitution does not exact.
A living person is not a means to an end. Events may be symbolic, but individuals are not mere symbols.9 The dramatic effect of “Judge Horton,” and the merit of its historical interpretation, however important they may be to the majority, are not matters before us, nor were they before any jury. The substantial truth of factual assertions in the work, and the liability of the network for any material errors in them, were questions for the jury to decide.

. Under Gertz, states may, in actions brought by private persons, set their own standards of liability for defamation, “so long as they do not impose liability without fault....” 418 U.S. at 347, 94 S.Ct. at 3010. Tennessee applies a negligence standard. Memphis Pub. Co. v. Nichols, 569 S.W.2d 412, 418 (Tenn.1978).

. In Nichols, supra note 1, the Tennessee Supreme Court stated that there is a presumption of the falsity of an alleged defamatory utterance — a presumption which “the defendant may rebut by proving truth as a defense.” 569 S.W.2d at 420. This correctly states the common law, but such a presumption cannot be reconciled with Gertz’s command that states not impose liability without fault. See Herbert v. Lando, 441 U.S. 153, 159, 170, 175-76, 99 S.Ct. 1635, 1639, 1646, 1648-49, 60 L.Ed.2d 115 (1979); Cianci v. New Times Pub. Co., 639 F.2d 54 at 60 (2d Cir. 1980, as amended Oct. 27, 1980) (per Friendly, J.). Cianci speaks only of cases within the ambit of Sullivan. 1 would go farther and hold that Gertz requires plaintiffs to prove falsity in all defamation cases. The majority adopts neither approach, but rather treats truth as a defense, although noting that public figure plaintiffs must show “malice” by clear and convincing evidence.
Under Tennessee law, substantial truth or falsity is at issue in defamation cases. Nichois, supra, 569 S.W.2d at 420-21. Nichols held that a literally true article could convey a defamatory meaning by the omission of essential, unob-vious facts. I believe the logical extension of this is that a trivially inaccurate report could convey a substantially true meaning. This of all theories would best support the directed verdicts in this case, although I nonetheless believe the question of truth was improperly taken from the jury.

. Wrote Bancroft Award winner Carter: “Like the Scottsboro boys, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates were also soon forgotten.
... In 1961, thirty miles apart from each other, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price died.” D. Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South 415-16 (1969) (footnote omitted).
Even Homer nods.

. In Brewer v. Memphis Pub. Co., Inc., 626 F.2d 1238 (5th Cir. 1980), the plaintiffs were former entertainers — a television personality and a football player — whose public figure status was “not tied to a particular public controversy,” id. at 1257, as the majority finds Mrs. Street’s to be. More important, the defamatory article in Brewer purported to describe the contemporary actions of the plaintiffs — not events that occurred forty years before publication. Thus, “the article was not an historical reflection but a newspaper article that purported to relate a contemporaneous event.” Id. (footnote omitted).
The venerable case of Sidis v. F-R Pub. Corp., 113 F.2d 806 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 311 U.S. 711, 61 S.Ct. 393, 85 L.Ed. 462 (1940), must be distinguished on precisely the same ground.
The plaintiff in Time, Inc. v. Johnston, 448 F.2d 378 (4th Cir. 1971), did, as the majority notes, “retire” nine years before publication of the alleged defamation, but he retired only as a *1249player. Johnston remained in organized professional basketball until two years before publication. At the time of the publication “he was a college basketball coach, still involved as a public figure in basketball.” Id. at 381.

. As the majority opinion notes, both Sidis and Johnston, supra note 4, antedate Gertz.

. Wolston v. Reader’s Digest Ass'n, Inc., 578 F.2d 427 (D.C.Cir.1978), rev’d, 443 U.S. 157, 99 S.Ct. 2701, 61 L.Ed.2d 450 (1979). The D. C. Circuit held that Wolston was a public figure in 1958, and rejected in one paragraph the argument that this status had passed with time. Id. at 431. The Supreme Court, reversing, held that Wolston was never a public figure, and did not decide whether or when an individual may cease to be a public figure. 443 U.S. at 166 n. 7, 99 S.Ct. at 2707 n. 7. However, the Supreme Court rejected the Circuit Court’s notion that Wolston remained a public figure because Soviet espionage remained a “legitimate topic of debate.” The Court found this delineation of the pertinent public controversy so broad as to leave nothing to debate. See 443 U.S. at 166 n. 8, 99 S.Ct. at 2707 n. 8. See also note 9, infra.

. See Nichols, supra, 569 S.W.2d at 418. A 1955 Tennessee statute sets lack of “due care” as the standard of broadcasters’ liability for defamatory statements uttered on the air by those other than the broadcasters’ agents. Tenn.Code Ann. § 29-24-104(a) (Michie 1980). Under this statute, broadcasters carry the burden of showing that due care was taken. Id. § 29-24-104(b).
The statute’s uniform standard of liability has been superseded by Gertz’s dual standards. The statute’s allocation of the burden of proof is now unconstitutional. See New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 283-84, 84 S.Ct. 710, 727-728, 11 L.Ed.2d 686 (1964). The majority opinion is silent on the applicability and constitutionality of this statute.
NBC’s counsel admitted at oral argument that he had discovered this statute, unilaterally found it inapplicable, and decided not to bring it to the trial court’s attention.

. See note 2, supra.

. The Supreme Court has repeatedly refused to find individuals public figures because they were involved in events of symbolic or exemplary import. See Wolston, supra, 443 U.S. at 166-68, 99 S.Ct. at 2707-2708 (failure to comply with subpoena of grand jury investigating Soviet espionage in United States did not result in public figure status); Time, Inc. v. Firestone, 424 U.S. 448, 454, 96 S.Ct. 958, 965, 47 L.Ed.2d 154 (1976) (society divorce is not a “public controversy” triggering application of malice standard in defamation action).
Firestone is vulnerable to the same criticisms as is Rosenbloom’s “newsworthiness” test for first amendment privileges. See L. Tribe, supra, § 12-13 at 644. Yet one clear lesson of Wolston and Firestone is that the term “public controversy” is read narrowly, not broadly. With imagination, any human activity acquires "symbolic” importance.