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In their delightful new etiquette book, "Things You Need to be Told," Lesley Carlin and Honore McDonough Ervin write, "It is much, much more polite simply to tell someone 'See you in hell' than 'See you in court.'"
Would that many should take those words to heart here.
In Niagara Falls, people seem to enjoy litigation the way people in Chicago enjoy the Cubs. Just over the past month, four different people have threatened to sue the Reporter for libel, a complex law I fear is not fully understood by the general public.
So, with the help of the "Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law," I offer this brief instructional guide.
1. Only individuals can be libeled. In New York, corporations, institutions, organizations, government entities and other enterprises are not covered under the law.
And dead people can't be libeled at all.
2. Libel can only be ruled on matters of fact. Opinion is largely exempt, even when it concerns individuals. A food critic commenting on bad service at a restaurant or a columnist using the word "slumlord" to describe the owner of substandard inner-city housing would prevail in a libel case even though the waitress or slumlord in question might be greatly offended.
The Rev. Jerry Falwell lost a famous libel case against "Hustler" magazine publisher Larry Flynt after the magazine ran a cartoon depicting Falwell doing something unsavory with his mother in an outhouse.
Beyond that, any factual errors must be shown to have been made deliberately, or at least with gross negligence, and with malice on the part of the writer. Also, damages to the party claiming injury have to be demonstrable. It is clearly a very high bar.
3. There is a tremendous difference between "public figures" and "private individuals" as defined under the law.
The term "public figure" is very broadly defined under New York's libel law, which the Associated Press states is the most liberal in the country.
The pertinent case here is Sullivan v. The New York Times.
For all intents and purposes, people who inject themselves into the public consciousness -- politicians, government employees and contractors, newspaper writers, participants in lawsuits, criminals or spokesmen for non-profit organizations, to name a few -- have largely exempted themselves from protection under the libel law.
Particularly when the offending article has to do with their public actions, rather than their private lives.
4. The legal mechanism known as the discovery process is one reason there aren't more libel suits. If a news story alleged, for example, that an accountant was cooking the books, he would be unwise to sue unless he knew with 100 percent certitude that the books were, in fact, squeaky clean.
Any information to the contrary would be brought out in court by the defense, thus becoming part of the public record and allowing for even further dissemination in the media. Perhaps more than anything else, this keeps the number of spurious suits to a minimum.
Still, the threat of libel action does have a chilling effect on news-gathering organizations, most of which are owned by large, deep-pocketed corporations.
That's the reason the majority of large newspapers are so mind-numbingly dull. Anyone can sue anybody for anything, which accounts for the glut of two-bit lawyers littering the countryside.
I myself have never been the target of a libel suit, although a paper I worked for in Cleveland was sued by the great bandleader Frankie Yankovic in 1977 because an article about him failed to include the phrase "The Polka King" after his name.
But until coming to Niagara Falls, I had never been subpoenaed in a court case over whom my sources were for a particular story, either.
Somehow I've got a feeling that, if it's going to happen anyplace, this'll be it.
And, believe me, I would welcome the discovery process.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 2 2002 |