holding that though there was no express statement that the appellant had committed perjury, the clear impact of the specific language in nine sentences was that the appellant lied while under oath, which weighed in favor of an actionable statement
How later courts described this case
- holding that though there was no express statement that the appellant had committed perjury, the clear impact of the specific language in nine sentences was that the appellant lied while under oath, which weighed in favor of an actionable statement
- holding that statements which appeared in a newspaper article that the plaintiff perjured himself on the sports page, that was “a traditional haven for cajoling, invective, and hyperbole,” would most likely be construed as writer’s opinion
- holding that in determining whether a statement is defamatory in nature, courts must look at the objective and subjective context of the allegedly defamatory remarks, as well as the broader context of the entire story
- recognizing that whether an individual perjured himself “is certainly verifiable by a perjury action with evi dence adduced from the transcripts and witnesses present at the hearing”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Holmes, J.,
concurring. I shall not at any length answer Justice Brown’s very energetic exercise of his First Amendment rights other than to say that I, along with Justice Locher and Justice William Brown, dissented in Milkovich v. News-Herald (1984), 15 Ohio St. 3d 292 , in that I felt that the law as pronounced by the majority in such case had no rational legal basis and should have been rejected, and not established as the law of this jurisdiction. Having stated what I felt to be the correct law then, I now embrace those words again as if herein restated. It does no violence to the legal doctrine of stare decisis to right that which is clearly wrong. It serves no valid public purpose to allow incorrect opinions to remain in the body of our law. Therefore, I concur in the syllabus and the opinion of the majority herein.