noting that state of mind is not a jury issue in all contexts and that summary judgment may be appropriate, “especially where the issue is recklessness, which is ordinarily inferred from objective facts” and especially in the First Amendment arena
How later courts described this case
- noting that state of mind is not a jury issue in all contexts and that summary judgment may be appropriate, “especially where the issue is recklessness, which is ordinarily inferred from objective facts” and especially in the First Amendment arena
- explaining 9 that recklessness “is ordinarily inferred from objective facts”
- holding summary disposition of case essential “[f]or the stake here, if harassment succeeds, is public debate.”
- "Where public officers and public affairs are concerned, there can be no libel by innuendo."
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
McGOWAN, Circuit Judge:
I concur in the result reached by Judge Wright, and in • Parts I and II of his opinion. The inadequacies of the Keogh affidavit under Rule 56(e), Fed.R.Civ. P., leave the record in a state where there are only the columns themselves to be measured against the unimpeached assertions by the Post editorial personnel that they had, on reading the columns prior to publication, no reason to believe that they were false in any respect. This does not suggest a quantum of proof remotely approaching “the high degree of awareness of * * * probable falsity demanded by New York Times * * which the Supreme Court said in Garrison was essential to the successful maintenance by public officials of either civil or criminal actions for libel. The question before us essentially is: With the proof in this state, would Keogh have been entitled to get to the jury on the issue of a reckless disregard of the matter of truth or falsity?
Although the circumstances of the Supreme Court’s rescue of the New York Times from the rigors of the law of libel as it was applied in Alabama have little resemblance to the setting of this case, the Court has appeared to persist in foreshortening very greatly the access of public officials to the jury in defamation claims. In a case like this, where the plaintiff has not made an effective tender of any evidence — other than the alleged libels themselves — bearing upon reckless disregard, I do not believe that the present decisions leave room for what could, at best, be sheer speculation by the jury on that issue.
WILBUR K. MILLER, Senior Circuit Judge, dissents.