Court Opinion

ID: 9470033
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:55:32.104497+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:41.727835
License: Public Domain

BREITENSTEIN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The majority holds that as a matter of law this defamation action must be dismissed because the publication was pure fantasy protected by the First Amendment. I do not agree.
On overwhelming evidence the jury found that the plaintiff Pring was the “Miss Wyoming” about whom the Penthouse article was written. The majority accept that jury finding. The question is whether Penthouse can escape liability by the claim that the article was fiction and fantasy.
The article contains both fact and fiction. The article says that Miss Wyoming performed fellatio with a male companion and caused him to levitate. In her appearance at a national Miss America contest she thought that she might save the world by similar conduct with high officials. She manipulated her baton so as to simulate fellatio. She performed fellatio with her coach in view of television cameras. I consider levitation, dreams, and public performance as fiction. Fellatio is not. It is a *444physical act, a fact, not a mental idea. Fellatio has long been recognized as an act of sexual deviation or perversion. Numerous decisions place fellatio within the crime of sodomy, which civilized people throughout the world have long condemned. In Hunt v. State of Oklahoma, 10 Cir., 683 F.2d 1305, a conviction for sale of a movie “graphically depicting a woman performing fellatio” Id. at 1307, was affirmed. The statements in the Penthouse article that Miss Wyoming, identified by the jury as plaintiff Pring, engaged in acts of sexual deviation and perversion, is a defamation of character which no decision of which I am aware has placed within First Amendment protection.
Penthouse cannot escape liability by relying on the fantasy used to embellish the fact. Penthouse did not present the article as fiction. It did not make the usual disclaimer of reference to no person living or dead. In the table of contents, the article is characterized as “Humor.” Responsibility for an irresponsible and reckless statement of fact, fellatio, may not be avoided by the gratuitous addition of fantasy. Penthouse does not claim that the fact statement was truthful. Moral standards may have changed since the First Amendment was adopted but that change has not gone so far as to protect a publisher which defames an identifiable living person by relating commission of an act of sexual deviation and perversion.
To justify the conclusion that the First Amendment defense presents a question of law, the majority adopt the “reasonably understood” test. To support that test reference is made to Greenbelt Pub. Assn. v. Bresler, 398 U.S. 6,90 S.Ct. 1537, 26 L.Ed.2d 6, and Letter Carriers Assn. v. Austin, 418 U.S. 264, 94 S.Ct. 2770, 41 L.Ed.2d 745. Bresler involved a newspaper report of a public meeting held by a City Council. The article truthfully reported that a person present at the meeting characterized the plaintiff’s negotiating position as “blackmail.” In reversing a judgment for plaintiff, the Court said that the publication did not impute a crime and that even the most careless reader would perceive that the word “blackmail” was no more than a “rhetorical hyperbole, a vigorous epithet.” 398 U.S. at 14, 90 S.Ct. at 1542.
Letter Carriers was a defamation action arising out of a labor dispute in which a union publication referred to plaintiffs as “scabs” and equated “scab” with “traitor.” In reversing a judgment for plaintiffs, the Court applied law relating to labor disputes and said, 418 U.S. at 283, 94 S.Ct. at 2780: “Rather than being a reckless and knowing falsehood, naming the appellees as scabs was literally and factually true.”
In both Greenbelt and Letter Carriers the alleged defamatory statement was true. Penthouse makes no claim that the act of fellatio by Miss Wyoming was true. The word “fellatio” was not used as an hyperbole or epithet. It was used to describe a physical act. The use of the technical Latin term rather than the vulgar vernacular does not protect Penthouse. The descriptions of the conduct of Miss Wyoming would make even the most careless reader aware of sexual deviation and perversion. The jury found that a “reasonable man” would understand that the plaintiff was the person referred to in the article, that the article was false and defamatory, and that it “unreasonably” placed the plaintiff in a false light before the public. See Jury Verdict, R. 1500-1503.
Nothing in Greenbelt or Letter Carriers applies a “reasonably understood” test to defamation actions generally. In each of those cases the alleged defamatory statement was literally true. Here it was not.
The action of the majority in applying the “reasonably understood” test as a matter of law contravenes the Tenth Circuit decision in Lawrence v. Moss, 10 Cir., 639 F.2d 634, cert. denied 451 U.S. 1031, 101 S.Ct. 3021, 69 L.Ed.2d 400. The Lawrence decision cites and analyzes Supreme Court cases with facts more analagous to the present case than either Greenbelt or Letter Carriers. Id. at 636-637. I stand by that analysis. Lawrence reversed a summary judgment for defendant, directed that a jury trial be held, Id. at 638-639, and said that questions of intent and malice *445are for the fact finder. Id. So also is the question of “reasonably understood." I recognize, as does Lawrence, that in some defamation cases brought against news media summary judgment may be proper as a screening device to prevent unnecessary harassment. Id. at 639. That principle does not apply here. The district court properly submitted the case to the jury.
The majority reject the jury verdict and order dismissal because, as a matter of law, the article is not defamatory. I disagree and, accordingly, dissent. The majority order of dismissal makes it unnecessary to consider the many other issues raised in the briefs.