Court Opinion

ID: 9615546
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:38:03.772329+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:00:39.385360
License: Public Domain

Hunstein, Justice,
dissenting.
Today, the majority holds Bruce Mathis, a defamation defendant, wholly unaccountable for damaging statements he made on an Internet discussion forum about a private individual, Thomas C. Cannon. In my opinion, Mathis should be held accountable for speech that exceeded the scope of legitimate criticism and instead fell within the range of reckless falsehoods against a private-plaintiff. Moreover, I take issue with the majority holding that Cannon is precluded from recovering punitive damages because he failed to request a retraction of Mathis’ defamatory remarks.
Cannon sued Mathis for cleárly actionable remarks he made about him on a financial message board that allows access to financial and other information about a corporation in which an individual has a particular interest:
From a First Amendment perspective, the financial message *30boards contribute to the marketplace of ideas by encouraging citizens to participate in public decision making. ... At a minimum, therefore, the boards provide an avenue for citizens to converse with one another and to seek consensus about topics that affect their lives.
Lidsky, Silencing John Doe: Defamation & Discourse in Cyberspace, 49 Duke L. J. 855 (2000). The issues raised in this case are whether the comments posted by Mathis, an outspoken opponent of the Solid Waste Management Authority, exceeded the “marketplace of ideas” that the First Amendment seeks to protect, see Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. F.C.C., 395 U. S. 367, 390 (89 SC 1794, 23 LE2d 371) (1969), and if so, in seeking recovery on those comments, whether Cannon is a private or limited-purpose public figure.
The majority erroneously concludes that Cannon is a limited-purpose public figure within the context of the public controversy surrounding the landfill in Crisp County. In Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U. S. 323, 345 (94 SC 2997, 41 LE2d 789) (1974), the U. S. Supreme Court defined “public figures” as people who
have assumed roles of special prominence in the affairs of society. Some occupy positions of such persuasive power and influence that they are deemed public figures for all purposes. More commonly, those classified as public figures have thrust themselves to the forefront of particular public controversies in order to influence the resolution of the issues involved.
Id. As noted by the majority, in Georgia, a plaintiff is a limited-purpose public figure if the facts satisfy the three-prong test set forth in Atlanta Journal-Constitution v. Jewell, 251 Ga. App. 808, 816-820 (555 SE2d 175) (2001). In determining that Cannon is a limited-purpose public figure, the majority identifies Cannon as a “crucial actor” in helping to develop and finance the project and describes his conduct as “exceeding the terms of Trans Waste’s contract to collect and haul solid waste to Crisp County.” The majority also relies on Cannon’s lawsuit against the Authority, concluding that Cannon precipitated the county’s financial crisis by the filing of Trans Waste’s lawsuit against the Authority. The record reflects, however, that Trans Waste was the sole waste hauler for the Authority and that Cannon, as president of the company, was merely fulfilling the duties of his office and performing his obligations under the contract with the Authority when he conducted the activities cited by the majority. For example, the Authority required that all business and correspondence relating to its contracts be conducted under the Authority’s *31name and on Authority letterhead. Therefore, Cannon signed his name, identifying his role as “Waste Services Provider” on Authority letterhead, only in correspondence addressing Authority projects. Moreover, Trans Waste had a reasonable business interest in making sure the Authority obtained city contracts early on for the Waste facility. In one instance, Trans Waste borrowed $450,000 to enable the Authority to obtain a city contract that would be serviced by Trans-Waste. Upon receiving funding, the Authority repaid the waste hauler. Their activities, as well as Cannon’s attendance at public meetings about the county landfill operation, constitute reasonable professional conduct by the president of the Authority’s sole waste provider. The conduct in no way elevated Cannon as an individual to the level of a “public figure” as defined in Gertz and applied in Jewell.
Similarly, Cannon’s resort to judicial litigation upon the county’s alleged breach of contract cannot be used as a factor to determine whether Cannon is a limited-purpose public figure. In Time, Inc. v. Firestone, 424 U. S. 448, 454-457 (96 SC 958, 47 LE2d 154) (1976), one of only three cases39 since Gertz in which the U. S. Supreme Court has addressed the limited-purpose public figure doctrine, the Supreme Court refused to rely on subject matter classifications, such as “judicial proceeding,” to determine the extent of constitutional protections afforded defamatory falsehoods.
Finally, the fact that the issues concerning the landfill may have been of public interest does not make Cannon a public figure. Not all issues that spark public debate constitute a public controversy. Each, case cited by the majority in which plaintiffs were found to be limited-purpose public figures involved significant social events occurring on the state, national, or international level. In Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 388 U. S. 130 (87 SC 1975,18 LE2d 1094) (1967), the defendant magazine accused the athletic director of the University of Georgia of conspiring to “fix” a football game. In Associated Press v. Walker, 388 U. S. 140 (87 SC 1975, 18 LE2d 1094) (1967), a former U. S. army general personally led students in an attack on law enforcement who were enforcing a desegregation order. Finally, the Jewell case involved the 1996 bombing of the Olympic Games, which resulted in Jewell initially being hailed as a hero for his role in discovering the bomb and evacuating bystanders and Jewell’s participation in national television and print interviews and his use of a media “handler.” The case at hand, however, involving a county-wide debate about a local landfill project, simply does not rise to the level *32of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing, racial desegregation in America, or even a state university’s controversy about whether the university’s athletic director fixed an SEC game.
The facts of this case also fail to establish the third prong of the test outlined in Jewell for determining whether under Georgia law a person is a limited-purpose public figure. Under this prong, the court must determine whether the alleged defamation was germane to the plaintiff’s participation in the controversy. The majority summarily determines that Mathis’ statements were germane to the local landfill debate because the first message made vague references to the controversy. The majority determines, therefore, with no further analysis, that the false accusations that Cannon was a crook and thief and had been fired from the Carlton company were “made as part of the ongoing debate about the garbage disposal dispute in Crisp County.” In fact, many of the statements against Cannon have absolutely no relevance to the landfill project. In the first message, Mathis states, “so get out now u thief.” The second message makes no reference to Crisp County or garbage dumping whatsoever but directly and falsely accuses Cannon of being fired from a previous job and demands an explanation. Finally, the third message, posted nearly 30 minutes later, reiterates the accusation that Cannon was fired and states that anyone dealing with Cannon is also a crook. A reasonable reader of these messages would not conclude that such false and inflammatory statements constitute public criticism of Cannon’s work on the landfill project, but would consider them to be assertions of fact constituting malicious and personal attacks on Cannon’s character and reputation. When Mathis posted these three Internet messages on Yahoo!, he was personally attacking Cannon using a method of broadcast that reaches far beyond Crisp County and those who possessed knowledge of the local landfill operation. The messages posted by Mathis under a pseudonym on the Yahoo! message board dedicated to the discussion of Waste Industries, Inc. and targeted to a receptive audience far exceeded mere hyperbole or exaggeration. Mathis’ messages contained accusations of dishonesty and criminality on the part of Cannon. Therefore, because the record demonstrates that Cannon was not a prominent figure in the controversy, he had no control over those aspects of the facility involved in the controversy, and he did not avail himself of the media in an effort to comment on or influence the outcome of the debate concerning the controversy, I would affirm the Court of Appeals’ determination that Cannon was not a limited-purpose public figure.
Nor can I agree with the majority’s consideration of OCGA § 51-5-11, the retraction statute, so as to preclude Cannon’s claim for punitive damages. As a procedural matter, the retraction issue is not properly before this Court. Mathis did not enumerate as error the *33Court of Appeals’ ruling on the applicability of OCGA § 51-5-11 and his briefs are equally devoid of any argument or citation to authority on the issue. Under our own Supreme Court rules, the issue either is not before the Court or was abandoned by Mathis by his failure to raise it in his briefs. See USCR 22. Accordingly, the majority’s decision as to the application of OCGA § 51-5-11 to this case constitutes nothing more than an improper advisory opinion.
I further take issue with the majority’s expansive rewriting of the retraction statute to make it applicable to any and all “communications of defamatory words to someone other than the person defamed.” Had the legislature intended to require a retraction for every defamatory publication and every libel defendant, as the majority holds today, it could have done so. Instead, in plain and unequivocal language, the legislature limited the application of the retraction statute to defendants who regularly publish information by mandating that the libel defendant correct and retract the allegedly libelous statement in the “next regular issue of the newspaper or other publication” following receipt of the demand for retraction. OCGA § 51-5-11 (b) (1) (B). The limiting language chosen by the legislature is consistent with its intent in enacting the statute “to provide for a method of retraction of libelous statements made by newspapers which shall relieve such newspapers from liability for punitive damages.” Ga. Laws 1958, p. 54. The retraction provision was subsequently amended to apply not only to newspapers, but newspapers and “other publications.” See Ga. L. 1960, p. 198, § 1.
Where the language of an act is plain and unequivocal, judicial construction is not only unnecessary but is forbidden. City of Jesup v. Bennett, 226 Ga. 606 (2) (176 SE2d 81) (1970). The plain language of OCGA § 51-5-11 requires a request for a retraction as a precondition to the recovery of punitive damages only against libel defendants who disseminate information or engage in discourse on a regular basis through newspaper, magazine, or other publication. See Williamson v. Lucas, 171 Ga. App. 695 (4) (320 SE2d 800) (1984). Thus, according to its plain language, OCGA § 51-5-11’s requirement that the retraction be placed in the “next regular issue” has no application to an individual libel defendant who, like Mathis, on a single occasion posted electronic messages in an Internet chat room. See generally Zelinka v. Americare Healthscan, 763 So2d 1173 (Fla. Ct. App. 2000) (statutory pre-suit notice and retraction requirements not applicable to private individual who posted message on Internet message board); It’s In the Cards, Inc. v. Meneau, 535 NW2d 11 (Wis. Ct. App. 1995) (retraction statute did not preclude claim for defamation based on messages posted to Internet message board). That is not to say that the retraction statute is entirely inapplicable to Internet *34publications of defamatory statements. To the contrary, there may well be circumstances where an individual or media defendant who regularly publishes an Internet newspaper, magazine or other publication will be subject to the mandatory provisions of the retraction statute, but that is not the case here. Mathis is a private individual who posted three defamatory messages in an Internet chat room and who is entirely incapable of complying with the statute’s requirement that a retraction be published in the “next regular issue.” Accordingly, if the issue were properly before this Court, I would agree with the Court of Appeals that the retraction provision of OCGA § 51-5-11 is inapplicable to the facts of this case.
Decided November 26, 2002
Reconsideration denied December 13,2002.
James W. Hurt & Associates, James W. Hurt, Thomas H. Hurt, for appellant.
Jones, Cork & Miller, Robert C. Norman, Jr., Hubert C. Lovein, Jr., for appellee.
Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy, James C. Rawls, Eric P. Schroeder, Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore, Jeffrey O. Bramlett, Michael B. Terry, Hull, Towill, Norman, Barrett & Salley, David E. Hudson, King & Spalding, Jamie N. Shipp, amici curiae.
In my view, the majority ruling which asks no self-censorship of an Internet poster is unconscionable in that it allows Internet users free reign to injure the reputations of others, even when the statements cross the bounds of propriety. I believe we are better served by applying our laws so that they do not threaten legitimate criticism or deter Internet users from speech that is truthful and non-defamatory, while protecting private individuals from cyberspace posters, like Mathis, who use the Internet to seek to foster the “poisonous atmosphere of the easy lie.” Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U. S. 75, 94 (86 SC 669, 15 LE2d 597) (1966).
I am authorized to state that Justice Carley and Justice Hines join in this dissent.

 The other two cases in which the Supreme Court considered and ruled on the issue finding that plaintiffs were private, not limited-purpose public figures are Wolston v. Reader’s Digest Assoc., 443 U. S. 157 (99 SC 2701, 61 LE2d 450) (1979) and Hutchinson v. Proxmire, 443 U. S. 111 (99 SC 2675, 61 LE2d 411) (1979).