Murray v. Lineberry

69 S.W.3d 560, 2001 Tenn. App. LEXIS 719
CourtCourt of Appeals of Tennessee
DecidedSeptember 27, 2001
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 69 S.W.3d 560 (Murray v. Lineberry) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Tennessee primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Murray v. Lineberry, 69 S.W.3d 560, 2001 Tenn. App. LEXIS 719 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2001).

Opinion

OPINION

BEN H. CANTRELL, P.J., M.S.,

delivered the opinion of the court,

in which WILLIAM B. CAIN, and PATRICIA J. COTTRELL, JJ., joined.

This appeal arises from a defamation action. The appellant sued the appellee for slander after the appellee aired a series of political advertisements including statements about the appellant, a deputy sheriff. The Wilson County Circuit Court granted the appellee’s motion for summary judgment. We affirm the trial court’s decision.

I.

This is an appeal from the trial court’s order granting the appellee’s motion for summary judgment in a defamation action. The appellee ran for the office of Sheriff of Wilson County for the August 6,1998 election. As part of his campaign, beginning on July 13, 1998, he aired six videotaped political advertisements on cable television. The advertisements contained numerous references to practices in the sheriffs department and comments about the behavior of deputies, sometimes by name. The plaintiff/appellant in this case is one of those deputies.

[562]*562At some point before airing the advertisements, appellee heard some Nashville Metropolitan police officers discussing a deputy sheriff in Wilson County who had been involved in a domestic dispute. Later, a young woman approached the appellee and told him she had been involved in a domestic dispute with the appellant. Ap-pellee also started receiving anonymous letters from “one of the sheriffs [sic] many snitches” regarding practices in the sheriffs department. Appellee decided to use the information he had discovered in several advertisements during his campaign for sheriff.

The relevant portions of the political advertisements identify the appellant as a deputy sheriff whose father is a county commissioner.1 The first advertisement includes a veiled comment about a deputy being involved in a violent domestic dispute and how, when the appellee is elected, that kind of behavior will be rewarded with dismissal not promotion. Later advertisements included a lengthy reading from a complaint filed in federal court by a female plaintiff against the appellant and the sheriff alleging that the appellant had severely battered the plaintiff while they were living together and that he and the sheriff conspired to cover it up. The complaint also alleged that the sheriff had coerced the appellant into initiating a criminal complaint against the plaintiff in the federal lawsuit, resulting in her arrest and rough treatment in state court. In another advertisement the appellee asserted that the appellant had been involved in other bad acts but that his file had been cleaned out because the sheriff needed the appellant’s father’s vote on the county commission.

The trial judge granted the appellee’s motion for summary judgment.

II.

Upon review of a grant of summary judgment, this court must determine whether the requirements of Tenn. R. Civ. P. 56 have been satisfied. See Hunter v. Brown, 955 S.W.2d 49, 50-51 (Tenn.1997). As this inquiry involves purely a question of law, our review is de novo without a presumption of correctness. Robinson v. Omer, 952 S.W.2d 423, 426 (Tenn.1997); McClung v. Delta Square Ltd. Partnership, 937 S.W.2d 891, 894 (Tenn.1996). Summary judgments are appropriate only where there is no genuine issue of material fact relevant to the claim or defense contained in the motion and the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law on the undisputed facts. See Tenn. R. Civ. P. 56.03; Bain v. Wells, 936 S.W.2d 618, 622 (Tenn.1997); Carvell v. Bottoms, 900 S.W.2d 23, 26 (Tenn.1995). Courts reviewing summary judgments must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party and draw all reasonable inferences in the nonmoving party’s favor. Omer, 952 S.W.2d at 426; Byrd v. Hall, 847 S.W.2d 208, 210 (Tenn.1993).

The trial court’s order reads as follows:

Firstly, assuming, in arguendo, that the plaintiff is a private person rather than a public official, the Court finds as follows: As to what has been termed segments 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 they are substantially true. As to segments 4 and 6, the Court finds that they are not defamatory. As to all segments, the Court finds that there is just absolutely, completely no proof of damages.
Secondly, the preceding findings were made based upon the assumption that he [563]*563was a private person. This Court finds that the plaintiff is, in fact, a public official and the grounds for finding that is that the acts that have been alleged and to which he has admitted do, indeed, reflect on his conduct fitness or his role in his public capacity as a police officer. Having made that finding, this Court finds that there is no proof of malice to be found anywhere in this record.

III.

Is THE APPELLANT A PUBLIC OFFICIAL/FIGURE?

In a case of libel or slander, the court must first decide whether the individual allegedly defamed is a private person or public official/figure. If an individual is not a public figure, he has a lower threshold to meet in making a defamation case. See New York Times, Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S.Ct. 710, 11 L.Ed.2d 686 (1964). If he is a public figure, he must prove actual malice on the part of the defendant. Id. This court has stated:

The existence of actual malice is a proper question to be decided by a court in a motion for summary judgment. Trigg v. Lakeway Publishers, Inc., 720 S.W.2d 69, 74 (Tenn. [sic] App.1986). To defeat the motion for summary judgment, a public official plaintiff must demonstrate evidence of actual malice with “convincing clarity.” Id, (citing New York Times, 376 U.S. at 285-86, 84 S.Ct. at 729, 11 L.Ed.2d at 710). Actual malice exists when a statement is made with knowledge that the statement is false, or with reckless disregard of whether it is false. Nichols, 569 S.W.2d at 415 (quoting New York Times, 376 U.S. at 279, 84 S.Ct. at 726).

Selby v. Ilabaca, No. 02A01-9503-CV-00058, 1996 WL 219620 at *4 (Tenn.Ct.App.1996).

In Selby, we held that a police officer was a public official. We stated that a police officer’s “duties affect the lives, liberty and property of citizens.... ” Selby, 1996 WL 219620, *4. We believe that the same is true of any law enforcement officer. Therefore, appellant is a public figure.

The New York Times rule, however, raises the standard for recovery only when the alleged defamatory statements relate to the public official’s official conduct. Press, Inc. v. Verran, 569 S.W.2d 435, 441 (Tenn.1978).

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Bluebook (online)
69 S.W.3d 560, 2001 Tenn. App. LEXIS 719, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/murray-v-lineberry-tennctapp-2001.