''Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc.'', 418 U.S. 323 (1974), was a
landmark decision of the
US Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of ...
establishing the standard of
First Amendment
First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1).
First or 1st may also refer to:
*World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement
Arts and media Music
* 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and reco ...
protection against
defamation claims brought by private individuals. The Court held that, so long as they do not impose liability without fault,
states are free to establish their own standards of liability for defamatory statements made about private individuals. However, the Court also ruled that if the state standard is lower than
actual malice
Actual malice in United States law is a legal requirement imposed upon public officials or public figures when they file suit for libel (defamatory printed communications). Compared to other individuals who are less well known to the general pub ...
, the standard applying to public figures, then only actual damages may be awarded.
The consequence is that
strict liability for defamation is unconstitutional in the United States; the plaintiff must be able to show that the defendant acted
negligently or with an even higher level of
mens rea. In many other common law countries, strict liability for defamation is still the rule.
Background of the case
In 1968, a
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
police
The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and th ...
officer, Richard Nuccio, shot and killed Ronald Nelson. After the officer was convicted of
second-degree murder, Nelson's family retained a lawyer,
Elmer Gertz
Elmer Gertz (September 14, 1906 – April 27, 2000) was an American lawyer, writer, law professor, and civil rights activist. During his lengthy legal career he won some high-profile cases, most notably parole for notorious killer Nathan Leopold a ...
, to represent them in civil litigation against the officer.
A year later, ''American Opinion'', a publication of the
John Birch Society
The John Birch Society (JBS) is an American right-wing political advocacy group. Founded in 1958, it is anti-communist, supports social conservatism, and is associated with ultraconservative, radical right, far-right, or libertarian ide ...
, ran a series of articles falsely alleging the existence of a
Communist conspiracy
A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between persons (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason, especially with political motivation, while keeping their agre ...
to discredit local police agencies and thus facilitate their replacement by a national police force that could more effectively implement the
dictatorship
A dictatorship is a form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, which holds governmental powers with few to no limitations on them. The leader of a dictatorship is called a dictator. Politics in a dictatorship a ...
they planned to impose on the country. One of those touched on the Nuccio case, claiming that the officer had been framed at his criminal trial and making strong allegations about Gertz. It claimed that he had orchestrated Nuccio's conviction and that he was a member of various communist
front organizations. It further implied that he had a lengthy criminal record himself and used various anti-communist
terms of abuse ("Leninist", "Communist-fronter") to describe him.
Lower court proceedings
Gertz filed suit in
federal court against Robert Welch, Inc. (the John Birch Society's legal name), claiming its article had
defamed
Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...
and injured his reputation as a
lawyer. The John Birch Society moved for
summary judgment
In law, a summary judgment (also judgment as a matter of law or summary disposition) is a judgment entered by a court for one party and against another party summarily, i.e., without a full trial. Summary judgments may be issued on the merits of ...
, arguing that Gertz was a public figure under the recently enunciated ''
Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts
''Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts'', 388 U.S. 130 (1967), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court establishing the standard of First Amendment protection against defamation claims brought by private individuals.
Background
The case involve ...
'' standard, which applied the ''
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan'' standard to anyone who was sufficiently public, not just government officials. Thus, it was argued, their statements about him were specially privileged and the plaintiff would have to demonstrate
actual malice
Actual malice in United States law is a legal requirement imposed upon public officials or public figures when they file suit for libel (defamatory printed communications). Compared to other individuals who are less well known to the general pub ...
. However, the magazine's editor admitted in an
affidavit
An ( ; Medieval Latin for "he has declared under oath") is a written statement voluntarily made by an ''affiant'' or '' deponent'' under an oath or affirmation which is administered by a person who is authorized to do so by law. Such a stateme ...
filed with the motion that he had made no independent effort to verify the claims in the article and had simply relied on the author's reputation and previous work.
The court denied the motion, suggesting that Gertz would need to prove only negligence. At the summing up, however, the court determined that he was neither a public figure nor a public official, and
instructed the jury to consider only damages, including punitive damages. Gertz was awarded $50,000.
However the defendants filed a "motion for
judgment notwithstanding the verdict
Judgment notwithstanding the verdict, also called judgment ''non obstante veredicto'', or JNOV, is a type of judgment as a matter of law that is sometimes rendered at the conclusion of a jury trial. In U.S. federal civil court cases, the term has b ...
, or in the alternative for a new trial " which Judge Decker allowed on the grounds that closer reading of the law persuaded him that ''Times'' applied insofar as it brought "matters of public interest" into the scope of requiring "actual malice" (knowledge of untruth or reckless disregard for the truth). Decker opined (in a
memorandum opinion) that Gertz had failed to show actual malice. (Gertz remarks in his book, that since he had been specifically instructed that there was no need to show actual malice, he expected, at this point in the opinion, a new trial to be ordered.) Decker granted the motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, saying that the law compelled it.
Gertz appealed to contest the applicability of the ''New York Times'' standard to this case. The
Seventh Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (in case citations, 7th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the courts in the following districts:
* Central District of Illinois
* Northern District of Ill ...
affirmed the trial court's verdict.
The Court's decision
The Supreme Court decided the case in a 5-4 majority opinion delivered by
Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr., with a separate
concurrence
In Western jurisprudence, concurrence (also contemporaneity or simultaneity) is the apparent need to prove the simultaneous occurrence of both ("guilty action") and ("guilty mind"), to constitute a crime; except in crimes of strict liability ...
by
Harry Blackmun. All four dissenting justices filed separate opinions.
Majority opinion
After reviewing the case history and prior decisions, Powell began with a reminder that "Under the
First Amendment
First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1).
First or 1st may also refer to:
*World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement
Arts and media Music
* 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and reco ...
there is no such thing as a false idea ... (it) requires that we protect some falsehood in order to protect speech that matters."
However, he rejected the idea that the mere public interest of the subject should outweigh any consideration of Gertz's status as a private or public figure. The latter, he noted, have access to more ways of counteracting allegations about them than private figures do, and thus they deserved a higher standard to prove libel. He also highly doubted that one could involuntarily become a public figure.
Gertz "had achieved no general fame or notoriety in the community," despite some public service in his past, and therefore did not meet the ''Sullivan'' or ''Curtis'' tests. "He plainly did not thrust himself into the vortex of this public issue, nor did he engage the public's attention in an attempt to influence its outcome."
"For these reasons, we conclude that the States should retain substantial latitude in their efforts to enforce a legal remedy for defamatory falsehood injurious to the reputation of a private individual," Powell said.
However, in the one aspect of the decision that was favorable to the
appellee
In law, an appeal is the process in which cases are reviewed by a higher authority, where parties request a formal change to an official decision. Appeals function both as a process for error correction as well as a process of clarifying and ...
s, the Court also ruled that states could not impose a
strict liability standard for defamation (i.e., plaintiffs had to be able to show fault of some kind) and that juries could not be allowed to award punitive damages, such as the $50,000 Gertz had received, absent any showing of actual malice, since juries could use that power to punish unpopular opinions. A new trial was ordered.
Blackmun's short concurrence praised his brethren for clarifying an issue he had felt was left undecided in ''
Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc.'', one of the earlier defamation cases. He also scoffed at fears expressed by dissenters that the press was now too unconstrained: "What the Court has done, I believe, will have little, if any, practical effect on the functioning of responsible journalism."
Dissenting opinions
The minority chose a variety of grounds for its disagreement. In the longest,
Byron White
Byron "Whizzer" Raymond White (June 8, 1917 April 15, 2002) was an American professional football player and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1962 until his retirement in 1993.
Born and raised in Colo ...
accused his colleagues of overreaching, a common theme of his dissents. "The Court, in a few printed pages, has federalized major aspects of libel law by declaring unconstitutional in important respects the prevailing defamation law in all or most of the 50 States," he said. "There are wholly insufficient grounds for scuttling the libel laws of the States in such wholesale fashion, to say nothing of deprecating the reputation interest of ordinary citizens and rendering them powerless to protect themselves... It is an ill-considered exercise of the power entrusted to this Court."
William O. Douglas
William Orville Douglas (October 16, 1898January 19, 1980) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who was known for his strong progressive and civil libertarian views, and is often ci ...
, on the other hand, felt that libel laws were too strict even as it was, and that leaving liability standards for private figures up to the states was too capricious:
:This of course leaves the simple negligence standard as an option with the jury free to impose damages upon a finding that the publisher failed to act as "a reasonable man." With such continued erosion of First Amendment protection, I fear that it may well be the reasonable man who refrains from speaking.
William Brennan joined him in fearing that the press in some states could be too easily restricted and practice
self-censorship in reporting on public affairs as a result.
Warren Burger
Warren Earl Burger (September 17, 1907 – June 25, 1995) was an American attorney and jurist who served as the 15th chief justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986. Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Burger graduated from the St. Paul Colleg ...
's short dissent worried that the decision might make it less likely that lawyers would be willing to take the cases of unpopular clients.
Disposition
Gertz won the retrial at District Court, which awarded him $400,000 (including $300,000 in punitive damages). The verdict was sustained on appeal, and the case finally ended when the Court denied the John Birch Society ''
certiorari'' in 1983. Gertz, a prominent civil libertarian, said that the jury verdict had not only vindicated him "but struck a blow for responsible journalism."
Subsequent jurisprudence
Since the majority opinion emphatically stated that there was "no such thing as a false idea," observers and libel law experts expected the court to define an
opinion privilege against libel the next time an appropriate case came up. It took sixteen years, and they were surprised and disappointed by ''
Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co.'',
[.] which explicitly rejected the idea, saying that existing protections it had recognized were sufficient to meet the requirements of the First Amendment. Only in
New York, where state courts have ruled all statements of opinion are protected as long as they do not allege illegal conduct, does the privilege exist.
See also
*
List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 418
This is a list of all the United States Supreme Court cases from volume 418 of the ''United States Reports
The ''United States Reports'' () are the official record ( law reports) of the Supreme Court of the United States. They include rulings, ...
References
Further reading
*Gertz, Elmer, ''Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc.: The Story of the Landmark Libel Case'', Southern Illinois University Press, 1992. .
External links
*
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gertz V. Robert Welch, Inc.
United States Supreme Court cases
United States Free Speech Clause case law
United States defamation case law
1974 in United States case law
John Birch Society
United States Supreme Court cases of the Burger Court