Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc.

418 U.S. 323, 94 S. Ct. 2997, 41 L. Ed. 2d 789, 1974 U.S. LEXIS 88, 1 Media L. Rep. (BNA) 1633

Opinions

Mr. Justice Powell

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This Court has struggled for nearly a decade to define the proper accommodation between the law of defamation and the freedoms of speech and press protected by the First Amendment. With this decision we return to that effort. We granted certiorari to reconsider the extent of a publisher’s constitutional privilege against liability for defamation of a private citizen. 410 U. S. 925 (1973).

I

In 1968 a Chicago policeman named Nuccio shot and killed a youth named Nelson. The state authorities prosecuted Nuccio for the homicide and ultimately obtained a conviction for murder in the second degree. The Nelson family retained petitioner Elmer Gertz, a reputable attorney, to represent them in civil litigation against Nuccio.

Respondent publishes American Opinion, a monthly outlet for the views of the John Birch Society. Early in the 1960’s the magazine began to warn of a nationwide conspiracy to discredit local law enforcement agencies and create in their stead a national police force capable of supporting a Communist dictatorship. As part of the continuing effort to alert the public to this assumed danger, the managing editor of American Opinion commissioned an article on the murder trial of Officer Nuccio. For this purpose he engaged a regular contributor to the magazine. In March 1969 respondent published the resulting article under the title “FRAME-UP: Richard Nuccio And The War On Police.” The article purports to demonstrate that the testimony against Nuccio at his criminal trial was false and that his prosecution was part of the Communist campaign against the police.

In his capacity as counsel for the Nelson family in the civil litigation, petitioner attended the coroner’s inquest into the boy’s death and initiated actions for damages,'but he neither discussed Officer Nuccio with the press nor played any part in the criminal proceeding. Notwithstanding petitioner’s remote connection with the prosecution of Nuccio, respondent’s magazine portrayed him as an architect of the “frame-up.” According to the article, the police file on petitioner took “a big, Irish cop to lift.” The article stated that petitioner had been an official of the “Marxist League for Industrial Democracy, originally known as the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which has advocated the violent seizure of our government.” It labeled Gertz a “Leninist” and a “Communist-fronter.” It also stated that Gertz had been an officer of the National Lawyers Guild, described as a Communist organization that “probably did more than any other outfit to plan the Communist attack on the Chicago police during the 1968 Democratic Convention.”

These statements contained serious inaccuracies. The implication that petitioner had a criminal record was false. Petitioner had been a member and officer of the National Lawyers Guild some 15 years earlier, but there was no evidence that he or that organization had taken any part in planning the 1968 demonstrations in Chicago. There was also no basis for the charge that petitioner was a “Leninist” or a “Communist-fronter.” And he had never been a member of the “Marxist League for Industrial Democracy” or the “Intercollegiate Socialist Society.”

The managing editor of American Opinion made no effort to verify or substantiate the charges against petitioner. Instead, he appended an editorial introduction stating that the author had “conducted extensive research into the Richard Nuccio Case.” And he included in the article a photograph of petitioner and wrote the caption that appeared under it: “Elmer Gertz of Red Guild harrasses Nuccio.” Respondent placed the issue of American Opinion containing the article on sale at newsstands throughout the country and distributed reprints of the article on the streets of Chicago.

Petitioner filed a diversity action for libel in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. He claimed that the falsehoods published by respondent injured his reputation as a lawyer and a citizen. Before filing an answer, respondent moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted, apparently on the ground that petitioner failed to allege special damages. But the court ruled that statements contained in the article constituted libel per se under Illinois law and that consequently petitioner need not plead special damages. 306 F. Supp. 310 (1969).

After answering the complaint, respondent filed a pretrial motion for summary judgment, claiming a constitutional privilege against liability for defamation.¹ It asserted that petitioner was a public official or a public figure and that the article concerned an issue of public interest and concern. For these reasons, respondent argued, it was entitled to invoke the privilege enunciated in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254 (1964). Under this rule respondent would escape liability unless petitioner could prove publication of defamatory falsehood “with ‘actual malice’ — that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” Id., at 280. Respondent claimed that petitioner could not make such a showing and submitted a supporting affidavit by the magazine’s managing editor. The editor denied any knowledge of the falsity of the statements concerning petitioner and stated that he had relied on the author’s reputation and on his prior experience with the accuracy and authenticity of the author’s contributions to American Opinion.

The District Court denied respondent’s motion for summary judgment in a memorandum opinion of September 16, 1970. The court did not dispute respondent’s claim to the protection of the New York Times standard. Rather, it concluded that petitioner might overcome the constitutional privilege by making a factual showing sufficient to prove publication of defamatory falsehood in reckless disregard of the truth. During the course of the trial, however, it became clear that the trial court had not accepted all of respondent’s asserted grounds for applying the New York Times rule to this case. It thought that respondent’s claim to the protection of the constitutional privilege depended on the contention that petitioner was either a public official under the New York Times decision or a public figure under Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 388 U. S. 130 (1967), apparently discounting the argument that a privilege would arise from the presence of a public issue. After all the evidence had been presented but before submission of the case to the jury, the court ruled in effect that petitioner was neither a public official nor a public figure. It added that, if he were, the resulting application of the New York Times standard would require a directed verdict for respondent. Because some statements in the article constituted libel per se under Illinois law, the court submitted the case to the jury under instructions that withdrew from its consideration all issues save the measure of damages. The jury awarded $50,000 to petitioner.

Following the jury verdict and on further reflection, the District Court concluded that the New York Times standard should govern this case even though petitioner was not a public official or public figure. It accepted respondent’s contention that that privilege protected discussion of any public issue without regard to the status of a person defamed therein. Accordingly, the court entered judgment for respondent notwithstanding the jury’s verdict.² This conclusion anticipated the reasoning of a plurality of this Court in Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc., 403 U. S. 29 (1971).

Petitioner appealed to contest the applicability of the New York Times standard to this case. Although the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit doubted the correctness of the District Court’s determination that petitioner was not a public figure, it did not overturn that finding.³ It agreed with the District Court that respondent could assert the constitutional privilege because the article concerned a matter of public interest, citing this Court’s intervening decision in Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc., supra. The Court of Appeals read Rosenbloom to require application of the New York Times standard to any publication or broadcast about an issue of significant public interest, without regard to the position, fame, or anonymity of the person defamed, and it concluded that respondent’s statements concerned such an issue.⁴ After reviewing the record, the Court of Appeals endorsed the District Court’s conclusion that petitioner had failed to show by clear and convincing evidence that respondent had acted with “actual malice” as defined by New York Times. There was no evidence that the managing editor of American Opinion knew of the falsity of the accusations made in the article. In fact, he knew nothing about petitioner except what he learned from the article. The court correctly noted that mere proof of failure to investigate, without more, cannot establish reckless disregard for the truth. Rather, the publisher must act with a “ 'high degree of awareness of . . . probable falsity.’ ” St. Amant v. Thompson, 390 U. S. 727, 731 (1968); accord, Beck-ley Newspapers Corp. v. Hanks, 389 U. S. 81, 84-85 (1967); Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U. S. 64, 75-76 (1964). The evidence in this case did not reveal that respondent had cause for such an awareness. The Court of Appeals therefore affirmed, 471 F. 2d 801 (1972). For the reasons stated below, we reverse.

II

The principal issue in this case is whether a newspaper or broadcaster that publishes defamatory falsehoods about an individual who is neither a public official nor a public figure may claim a constitutional privilege against liability for the injury inflicted by those statements. The Court considered this question on the rather different set of facts presented in Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc., 403 U. S. 29 (1971). Rosenbloom, a distributor of nudist magazines, was arrested for selling allegedly obscene material while making a delivery to a retail dealer. The police obtained a warrant and seized his entire inventory of 3,000 books and magazines. He sought and obtained an injunction prohibiting further police interference with his business. He then sued a local radio station for failing to note in two of its newscasts that the 3,000 items seized were only “reportedly” or “allegedly” obscene and for broadcasting references to “the smut literature racket” and to “girlie-book peddlers” in its coverage of the court proceeding for injunctive relief. He obtained a judgment against the radio station, but the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held the New York Times privilege applicable to the broadcast and reversed. 415 F. 2d 892 (1969).

This Court affirmed the decision below, but no majority could agree on a controlling rationale. The eight Justices⁵ who participated in Rosenbloom announced their views in five separate opinions, none of which commanded more than three votes. The several statements not only reveal disagreement about the appropriate result in that case, they also reflect divergent traditions of thought about the general problem of reconciling the law of defamation with the First Amendment. One approach has been to extend the New York Times test to an expanding variety of situations. Another has been to vary the level of constitutional privilege for defamatory falsehood with the status of the person defamed. And a third view would grant to the press and broadcast media absolute immunity from liability for defamation. To place our holding in the proper context, we preface our discussion of this case with a review of the several Rosenbloom opinions and their antecedents.

In affirming the trial court’s judgment in the instant case, the Court of Appeals relied on Mr. Justice Brennan’s conclusion for the Rosenbloom plurality that “all discussion and communication involving matters of public or general concern,” 403 U. S., at 44, warrant the protection from liability for defamation accorded by the rule originally enunciated in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254 (1964). There this Court defined a constitutional privilege intended to free criticism of public officials from the restraints imposed by the common law of defamation. The Times ran a political advertisement endorsing civil rights demonstrations by black students in Alabama and impliedly condemning the performance of local law-enforcement officials. A police commissioner established in state court that certain misstatements in the advertisement referred to him and that they constituted libel per se under Alabama law. This showing left the Times with the single defense of truth, for under Alabama law neither good faith nor reasonable care would protect the newspaper from liability. This Court concluded that a “rule compelling the critic of official conduct to guarantee the truth of all his factual assertions” would deter protected speech, id., at 279, and announced the constitutional privilege designed to counter that effect:

“The constitutional guarantees require, we think, a federal rule that 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.” Id., at 279-280.⁶

Three years after New York Times, a majority of the Court agreed to extend the constitutional privilege to defamatory criticism of “public figures.” This extension was announced in Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts and its companion, Associated Press v. Walker, 388 U. S. 130, 162 (1967). The first case involved the Saturday Evening Post’s charge that Coach Wally Butts of the University of Georgia had conspired with Coach “Bear” Bryant of the University of Alabama to fix a football game between their respective schools. Walker involved an erroneous' Associated Press account of former Major General Edwin Walker’s participation in a University of Mississippi campus riot. Because Butts was paid by a private alumni association and Walker had resigned from the Army, neither could be classified as a “public official” under New York Times. Although Mr. Justice Harlan announced the result in both cases, a majority of the Court agreed with Mr. Chief Justice Warren’s conclusion that the New York Times test should apply to criticism of “public figures” as well as “public officials.” ⁷ The Court extended the constitutional privilege announced in that case to protect defamatory criticism of nonpublic persons who “are nevertheless intimately involved in the resolution of important public questions or, by reason of their fame, shape events in areas of concern to society at large.” Id., at 164 (Warren, C. J., concurring in result).

In his opinion for the plurality in Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc., 403 U. S. 29 (1971), Mr. Justice Brennan took the New York Times privilege one step further. He concluded that its protection should extend to defamatory falsehoods relating to private persons if the statements concerned matters of general or public interest. He abjured the suggested distinction between public officials and public figures on the one hand and private individuals on the other. He focused instead on society's interest in learning about certain issues: “If a matter is a subject of public or general interest, it cannot suddenly become less so merely because a private individual is involved, or because in some sense the individual did not ‘voluntarily’ choose to become involved.” Id., at 43. Thus, under the plurality opinion, a private citizen involuntarily associated with a matter of general interest has no recourse for injury to his reputation unless he can satisfy the demanding requirements of the New York Times test.

Two Members of the Court concurred in the result in Rosenbloom but departed from the reasoning of the plurality. Mr. Justice Black restated his view, long shared by Mr. Justice Douglas, that the First Amendment cloaks the news media with an absolute and indefeasible immunity from liability for defamation. Id., at 67. Mr Justice White concurred on a narrower ground. Ibid. He concluded that “the First Amendment gives the press and the broadcast media a privilege to report and comment upon the official actions of public servants in full detail, with no requirement that the reputation or the privacy of an individual involved in or affected by the official action be spared from public view.” Id., at 62. He therefore declined to reach the broader questions addressed by the other Justices.

Mr. Justice Harlan dissented. Although he had joined the opinion of the Court in New York Times, in Curtis Publishing Co. he had contested the extension of the privilege to public figures. There he had argued that a public figure who held no governmental office should be allowed to recover damages for defamation “on a showing of highly unreasonable conduct constituting an extreme departure from the standards of investigation and reporting ordinarily adhered to by responsible publishers.” 388 U. S., at 155. In his Curtis Publishing Co. opinion Mr. Justice Harlan had distinguished New York Times primarily on the ground that defamation actions by public officials “lay close to seditious libel . . . .” Id., at 153. Recovery of damages by one who held no public office, however, could not “be viewed as a vindication of governmental policy.” Id., at 154. Additionally, he had intimated that, because most public officials enjoyed absolute immunity from liability for their own defamatory utterances under Barr v. Matteo, 360 U. S. 564 (1959), they lacked a strong claim to the protection of the courts.

In Rosenbloom Mr. Justice Harlan modified these views. He acquiesced in the application of the privilege to defamation of public figures but argued that a different rule should obtain where defamatory falsehood harmed a private individual. He noted that a' private person has less likelihood “of securing access to channels of communication sufficient to rebut falsehoods concerning him” than do public officials and public figures, 403 U. S., at 70, and has not voluntarily placed himself in the public spotlight. Mr. Justice Harlan concluded that the States could constitutionally allow private individuals to recover damages for defamation on the basis of any standard of care except liability without fault.

1 Petitioner filed a cross-motion for summary judgment on grounds not specified in the record. The court denied petitioner’s cross-motion without discussion in a memorandum opinion of September 16, 1970.

2 322 F. Supp. 997 (1970). .Petitioner asserts that the entry of judgment n. o. v. on the basis of his failure to show-knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth constituted unfair surprise and deprived him of a full and fair opportunity to prove “actual malice” on the part of respondent. This contention is not supported by the record. It is clear that the trial court gave petitioner no reason to assume that the New York Times privilege would not be available to respondent. The court’s memorandum opinion denying respondent’s pretrial motion for summary judgment does not state that the New York Times standard was inapplicable to this case. Rather, it reveals that the trial judge thought it possible for petitioner to make a factual showing sufficient to overcome respondent’s claim of constitutional privilege. It states in part:

“When there is a factual dispute as to the existence of actual malice, summary judgment is improper.

“In the instant case a jury might infer from the evidence that [respondent’s] failure to investigate the truth of the allegations, coupled with its receipt of communications challenging the factual accuracy of this author in the past, amounted to actual malice, that is, ‘reckless disregard’ of whether the allegations were true or not. New York Times [Co.] v. Sullivan, [376 U. S. 264,] 279-280 [(1964)].” Mem. Op., Sept. 16, 1970.

Thus, petitioner knew or should have known that the outcome of the trial might hinge on his ability to show by clear and convincing evidence that respondent acted with reckless disregard for the truth. And this question remained open throughout the trial. Although the court initially concluded that the applicability of the New York Times rule depended on petitioner’s status as a public figure, the court did not decide that petitioner was not a public figure until all the evidence had been presented. Thus petitioner had every opportunity, indeed incentive, to prove “reckless disregard” if he could, and he in fact attempted to do so. The record supports the observation by the Court of Appeals that petitioner “did present evidence of malice (both the 'constitutional’ and the ‘ill will’ type) to support his damage claim and no such evidence was excluded ... .” 471 F. 2d 801, 807 n. 15 (1972).

3 The court stated:

“[Petitioner’s] considerable stature as a lawyer, author, lecturer, and participant in matters of public import undermine[s] the validity of the assumption that he is not a ‘public figure’ as that term has been used by the progeny of New York Times. Nevertheless, for purposes of decision we make that assumption and test the availability of the claim of privilege by the subject matter of the article.” Id., at 805.

4 In the Court of Appeals petitioner made an ingenious but unavailing attempt to show that respondent’s defamatory charge against him concerned no issue of public or general interest. He asserted that the subject matter of the article was the murder trial of Officer Nuccio and that he did not participate in that proceeding. Therefore, he argued, even if the subject matter of the article generally were protected by the New York Times privilege, under the opinion of the Bosenbloom plurality, the defamatory statements about him were not. The Court of Appeals rejected this argument. It noted that the accusations against petitioner played an integral part in respondent’s general thesis of a nationwide conspiracy to harass the police:

“[W]e may also assume that the article’s basic thesis is false. Nevertheless, under the reasoning of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, even a false statement of fact' made in support of a false thesis is protected unless made with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard of its truth or falsity. It would undermine the rule of that case to permit the actual falsity of a statement to determine whether or not its publisher is entitled to the benefit of the rule.

“If, therefore, we put to one side the false character of the article and treat it as though its contents were entirely true, it cannot be denied that the comments about [petitioner] were integral to its central thesis. They must be tested under the New York Times standard.” 471 F. 2d, at 806.

We think that the Court of Appeals correctly rejected petitioner’s argument. Its acceptance might lead to arbitrary imposition of liability on the basis of an unwise differentiation among kinds of factual misstatements. The present case illustrates the point. Respondent falsely portrayed petitioner as an architect of the criminal prosecution against Nuccio. On its face this inaccuracy does not appear defamatory. Respondent also falsely labeled petitioner a “Leninist” and a “Communist-fronter.” These accusations are generally considered defamatory. Under petitioner’s interpretation of the “public or general interest” test, respondent would have enjoyed a constitutional privilege to publish defamatory falsehood if petitioner had in fact been associated with the criminal prosecution. But this would mean that the seemingly innocuous mistake of confusing petitioner's role in the litigation against Officer Nuccio would destroy the privilege otherwise available for calling petitioner a Communist-fronter. Thus respondent’s privilege to publish statements whose content should have alerted it to the danger of injury to reputation would hinge on the accuracy of statements that carried with them no such warning. Assuming that none of these statements was published with knowledge of falsity or with reckless disregard for the truth, we see no reason to distinguish among the inaccuracies.

5 Mr. Justice Douglas did not parteipate in the consideration or decision of Rosenbloom.

6 New York Times and later cases explicated the meaning of the new standard. In New York Times the Court held that under the circumstances the newspaper’s failure to check the accuracy of the advertisement against news stories in its own files did not establish reckless disregard for the truth. 376 U. S., at 287-288. In St. Amant v. Thompson, 390 U. S. 727, 731 (1968), the Court equated reckless disregard of the truth with subjective awareness of probable falsity: “There must be sufficient evidence to permit the conclusion that the defendant in fact entertained serious doubts as to the truth of his publication.” In Beckley Newspapers Corp. v. Hanks, 389 U. S. 81 (1967), the Court emphasized the distinction between the New York Times test of knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard of the truth and “actual malice” in the traditional sense of ill-will. Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U. S. 64 (1964), made plain that the new standard applied to criminal libel laws as well as to civil actions and that it governed criticism directed at “anything which might touch on an official’s fitness for office.” Id., at 77. Finally, in Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U. S. 75, 85 (1966), the Court stated that “the ‘public official’ designation applies at the very least to those among the hierarchy of government employees who have, or appear to the public to have, substantial responsibility for or control over the conduct of governmental affairs.”

In Time, Inc. v. Hill, 385 U. S. 374 (1967), the Court applied the New York Times standard to actions under an unusual state statute. The statute did not create a cause of action for libel. Rather, it provided a remedy for unwanted publicity. Although the law allowed recovery of damages for harm caused by exposure to public attention rather than by factual inaccuracies, it recognized truth as a complete defense. Thus, nondefamatory factual errors could render a publisher liable for something akin to invasion of privacy. The Court ruled that the defendant in such an action could invoke the New York Times privilege regardless of the fame or anonymity of the plaintiff. Speaking for the Court, Me. Justice BREnnan declared that this holding was not an extension of New York Times but rather a parallel fine of reasoning applying that standard to this discrete context:

“This is neither a libel action by a private individual nor a statutory action by a public official. Therefore, although the First Amendment principles pronounced in New York Times guide our conclusion, we reach that conclusion only by applying these principles in this discrete context. It therefore serves no purpose to distinguish the facts here from those in New York Times. Were this a libel action, the distinction which has been suggested between the relative opportunities of the public official and the private individual to rebut defamatory charges might be germane. And the additional state interest in the protection of the individual against damage to his reputation would be involved. Cf. Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U. S. 75, 91 (Stewart, J., concurring).” 385 U. S., at 390-391.

7 Professor Kalven once introduced a discussion of these eases with the apt heading, “You Can’t Tell the Players without a Score Card.” Kalven, The Reasonable Man and the First Amendment: Iiill, Butts, and Walker, 1967 Sup. Ct. Rev. 267, 275. Only three other Justices joined Mr. Justice Harlan’s analysis of the issues involved. In his concurring opinion, Mr. Chief Justice Warren stated the principle for which these cases stand — that the New York Times test reaches both public figures and public officials. Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice White agreed with the Chief Justice on that question. Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Douglas reiterated their view that publishers should have an absolute immunity from liability for defamation, but they acquiesced in the Chief Justice’s reasoning in order to enable a majority of the Justices to agree on the question of the appropriate constitutional privilege for defamation of public figures.