stating that the court was “reluctant to afford greater constitutional protection to members of the print and broadcast media than to ordinary citizens” and therefore holding that when a public figure sues a private individual, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant made false and defamatory statements about the plaintiff with actual malice
How later courts described this case
- stating that the court was “reluctant to afford greater constitutional protection to members of the print and broadcast media than to ordinary citizens” and therefore holding that when a public figure sues a private individual, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant made false and defamatory statements about the plaintiff with actual malice
- stating that a summary judgment may be granted on the basis of uncontroverted testimonial evidence of an interested witness if that evidence “is clear, positive and direct, otherwise credible and free from contradictions and inconsistencies, and could have been readily controverted” (citing TEX. R. CIV. P. 166a(c))
- noting that constitutional implications in defamation claims do not alter our summary judgment standards
- asserting that “if the non-movant must, in all likelihood, come for the with independent evidence to prevail, then summary judgment may well be proper in the absence of such controverting proof’
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
MAUZY, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. The majority today ignores stare decisis and cavalierly overrules the court’s recent decisions in Bessent v. Times-Herald Printing Co., 709 S.W.2d 635 (Tex.1986), and Beaumont Enterprise & Journal v. Smith, 687 S.W.2d 729 (Tex.1985). While stare decisis should remain a flexible doctrine, I see no compelling reason to overturn established Texas summary judgment law in this area of the law.
Nonetheless, the trial court was correct in rendering summary judgment for Casso. For almost five years, Brand had an opportunity to conduct his own discovery to rebut Casso’s allegations of lack of malice in an attempt to raise a fact issue but chose not to do so. Under Channel 4, KGBT v. Briggs, 759 S.W.2d 939 (Tex.1988), considering the evidence presented by the parties on the issue of actual malice, the trial court was correct in rendering summary judgment for Casso. For this reason, the judgment of the court of appeals should be reversed and that of the trial court should be affirmed.