A Connecticut woman was denied in her quest to force Hearst newspapers to eliminate records of drug charges against her even after the charges were dropped and erased from the public record. The woman, Lorraine Martin, sued for libel and the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against her. “Just as the [Connecticut] Erasure Statute does not prevent the government from presenting witness testimony at a later trial that describes the conduct that underlies an erased arrest, the statute does not render historically accurate news accounts of an arrest tortious merely because the defendant is later deemed as a matter of legal fiction never to have been arrested,” wrote the judge. (Hollywood Reporter, January 28, 2015, by Eriq Gardner)
The 2nd Circuit ruled that there was no libel in the reporting about the charges against Martin. “Reporting Martin’s arrest without an update may not be as complete a story as Martin would like, but it implies nothing false about her. Accordingly, we reject Martin’s contention that the reports of her arrest are defamatory because they fail to mention that the case against her was eventually nolled,” wrote the judge. (The Washington Post The Volokh Conspiracy, January 28, 2015, by Eugene Volokh)