Globe Communications Case Summary

Journalists and photographers of both major local newspapers didn 't miss any opportunity to blast my name and photos for the world to see. My involvement with the State of Florida had ended up in a political witch-trial with much fire, magnitude, and media coverage. My lawyer said in his career he had never had a file as thick, or a case which had turned as dirty as mine. Several articles about my legal battle were covered in the front page of the Metro section of the

In order to win a defamation case the following elements must be present: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) the statement caused injury, damages, or some harm caused to the person or entity who is the subject of the statement; 4) the statement was false; 5) the statement did not fall into a privileged category.

In order for a publication to be defamatory, it should be accessible by at least one person other than the Plaintiff. Groot published his statement on twitter, a form of social media accessible to all. The Uniform Defamation

An example of a defamation case is Zenaida Gonzalez vs Casey Anthony. During the course of the murder investigation Casey Anthony told police that Caylee had been left with a babysitter named Zenaida Gonzalez, and that the babysitter had kidnapped Caylee. During the trial criminal trial Anthony admitted this claims were false. Gonzalez then sued Anthony for defamation

York Times policy because it, “attacks of a personal character”. They saw it as negligence for

A 20th century court case that set an early standard was the New York Times v. Sullivan case. This was the first case ever where the Supreme Court protected defamation under the First Amendment directed towards officials of the government. Sometimes referred to as the “Times-Sullivan rule” or “actual-malice rule,” states that “the constitution prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with ‘actual malice’- that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not” (Pg. 88). In the next years following the Times-Sullivan case, the Supreme court further explained that that the actual-malice

Within the case, the New York Times was the defendant, which whom refutes the claim or charge that was brought against them in a court who and is seeking to prove their innocence. The newspaper stated claims that the arrest of Martin Luther King, Jr. for perjury in Alabama was part of a campaign to destroy King's efforts to integrate public facilities and encourage blacks to vote. Sullivan was the plaintiff who filed a complaint/charge against the defendant for prosecution by the courts and who brings suit in a court. Sullivan filed libel action against the New York Times and the four black ministers who were listed as endorsers of the ad, claiming that the allegations against the Montgomery police defamed him. As opposed to criminal claims,

NY Times was a case that revolved around the 1st Amendment and freedoms of speech and press. The NY Times sold advertising space to a coalition of civil rights leaders. These leaders described violent events that have happened in the South against African Americans. This was a tactic in order to gain supports for the violence. The court ruled 9-0 in favor of NY Times, saying that the first Amendment protects all lines of publication including false statements. This created actual malice, also known as the NY Times Standard. Actual malice is when you know a statement is false or when you just disregard if the statement’s truth or

In this case Cartwright can’t sue Judge Barnes for libel because damaging a person’s reputation by saying a false statement is not Libel, in order for the false statement to be considered Libel it has to be written or broadcasted ,for example in the case of a magazine publishing a defamatory comment about someone.

5. Explain the key elements of New York Times v. Sullivan (1964). What were the legal issues involved, and what was the U.S. Supreme Court’s rationale for its ruling? As a result, what does a public official have to establish in order to win a libel suit? Background on the Case: ● March 29, 1960 civil rights activist published a full page advertisement to raise money for MLK Jr. on the NY Times ○ Times said they arrested MLK 7 times--

Served to protect a citizen’s reputation, libel law lets any living person who believes their reputation was damaged by written word file a libel case to rebuild their reputation and gain money for compensation. The initial failures of the story lie in reporter’s negligence in collecting and verifying information regarding the rumor following Jane Simpson. Principal tenets of the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics include seeking truth, verifying information before publishing, avoiding furtive reporting if possible, and not

One Very Commodious Umbrella is a collection of short essays by award winning legal scholars about landmark United States Supreme Court cases that based their ruling on the New York Times v. Sullivan case. The Sullivan case changed American life in 1964 and continues to affect us today because of the precedent it set. The New York Times ran an advertisement that criticized the Montgomery Alabama police department. The police commissioner took offense claiming the advertisement hurt his reputation and had libeled him. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the New York Times, reasoning that the First Amendment protects the right to publish statements. This case also established that in order to prove libel, a public official must show that the statements made against him was made with actual malice, “that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard for the truth.”

Although courts have used different standard, lower courts have generally used the following four step analysis to determine whether a plaintiff is a limited purpose public figure: “(1) isolating the controversy and determining the scope of the public’s interest; (2) examining the plaintiff’s role in the controversy; (3) determining if the defamatory statement is germane to the plaintiff’s role in the controversy; and (4) analyzing the extent of the plaintiff’s access to channels of media communication.” However, there are still inconsistencies in the ways that courts analyze each prong. In addition to the plaintiff’s access to media, the role a plaintiff must play in a controversy to become a public figure, has also been topic of debate. One of the reasons for such debate is the every changing social marketplace.

This makes the tort of defamation unique among all other common law torts. The Ontario Civil Liberties Association best explains this:

People have a tendency to use slander and libel interchangeably, but that is incorrect even if they share similarities. According to Liuzzo, libel is the "spreading of damaging statements in written form," and slander is the spreading of damaging words or ideas about a person either directly or indirectly, usually with words, gestures or actions (2016, p. 52). Libel being mostly in the relam of the written word can be found in newspapers, magazines and websites, but it can also exist within memos and personal letters (Liuzzo, 2016, p. 53). A recent example of libel is that of actress Rebel Wilson who was awarded 3.6 million dollars in Australian court for damages from Bauer Media who published in two magazines that the actress was a serial-liar