I understand that Appellate Courts may get the facts wrong on occasion, especially with the hacked up language of the opinion on Westlaw. However, it’s the only factual description I’ve seen, so I relied on it. Not that I doubt your recollection of an article published over four years ago, but do you have something other than that for me to go on in forming my opinion?
Correct me again, if I’m wrong, but I don’t think it ever went to the jury. I think it was a ruling on the motion for summary judgment that is being appealed.
And thanks for the information about the Observer, Mtgman. It appears it is the same type of alternative newspaper that the Chicago Reader is, except the Reader always has a few more factual stories. And I appreciate any information you can get that would contradict the Appellate Court ruling.
Poked at Nexis a bit and found this. Nothing as useful as a scan of the page, but some more details on how the article was presented. I gotta say, they sure pulled this one with a straight face. I’m not sure what the fact-finders came up with, haven’t found any of their statements, but I may poke it a bit more to see if I can find a transcript or two.
Based on other info in the article I can confirm that the case has not gone before a jury. The unique nature of this article within the Observer’s body of work(as I demonstrated on the previous page, it seems to their only “Satire” piece) along with the info about the author being a prize-winning author being printed alongside the article. If the tongue was in the cheek it wasn’t indicated by the presentation. The determination of it being satire or not is going to be with the individual reader. It is really a borderline piece.
Having skimmed through the parties’ briefs, it looks like “actual malice” is a winner here. The First Amendment, as applied by the U.S. Supreme Court in cases such as the famous New York Times v. Sullivan, requires that public-figure defamation plaintiffs prove the defendant published the defamatory statements with “actual malice”; that is, the defendant must have either known the statements were false or have acted with reckless disregard for their truth or falsity.
Obviously, that traditional formulation does not work in the case of satire/fiction, where the statements are invariably not true. (Duh. That’s what separates fiction from non-fiction.) The Observer’s lawyers argue persuasively that in the case of fiction, the proper constitutional standard for “actual malice” is whether the defendant either knew they would be taken as true by the audience, or that they did care whether it would be taken as true. Given the obvious internal indicators that the story was satirical, there’s no way, as a matter of law, that the plaintiffs can show actual malice. Reversed and rendered.
And on a simple matter of fact, the Observer’s brief also points out that the complaints received by the Judge Whitten in response to the satire appear to be in response to an email glurge version of the story that omitted most of the obvious clues that showed the original to be satire. Also, the Dallas radio host who went on the air to discuss the story when he thought it was true ended up quickly correcting himself and stating that he “had egg on his face” when he read the entire story and realized it was satire. Thus, it looks to me like the plaintiffs’ evidence that people really did take the story to be true is extremely weak. Maybe not weak enough to lose on summary judgment, but certainly weak enough that anyone in the thread claiming people really did receive it as true ought to qualify those statements.
Just FYI, because I have been a fairly active participant in this thread, I’ll be on vacation next week and I’m not sure how often, or if at all, I’ll be checking the boards. So if you’ve got any questions or need any clarifications on anything I’ve posted, please be patient. Thanks.