A surfer claiming that a magazine article falsely portrayed him as a destitute, drug-using social outcast was unable to cash in on his lawsuit. A U.S. District Court jury found that there were no false statements in the article. -DB
Pacific Business News (Honolulu)
March 5, 2009
By Linda Chiem
A federal court jury in Honolulu decided Thursday that a magazine profile of North Shore surfboard shaper Craig Elmer “Owl” Chapman was not libelous.
It was the first libel suit against a publication to go before a jury in Hawaii since the 1970s.
The jury decision ends a two-year legal battle between Chapman, of Haleiwa, and the California-based magazine, The Surfer’s Journal, over a 2006 article that Chapman claimed inaccurately portrayed him as a destitute, drug-using social outcast.
After a six-day trial in U.S. District Court, the eight jurors ruled in favor of the magazine and found that neither the publisher, Steve Pezman, or the article’s author, Jeff Johnson, made false statements in the 13-page magazine spread on Chapman.
“It’s a complete victory for the defendants and a strong affirmation of the media’s right to write about public figures,” said Jeffrey Portnoy, managing partner of Honolulu law firm Cades Schutte, which represented The Surfer’s Journal. “We’re tremendously excited. There aren’t too many libel jury verdicts, especially in Hawaii, and this one is one of the few.”
In January 2007, Chapman sued Pezman and Johnson claiming that the article ruined both his reputation and his surfboard-shaping business.
“A ridiculously extreme portrait (indeed a most sinister caricature) of plaintiff emerges that casts him in a false light —- and which, further, points to a grandiose egotist who is mean-spirited, self-serving, full of braggadocio, impossibly arrogant and in the end, a degenerate, pathetic and drug-addled social outcast,” Chapman’s lawsuit claims.
Court documents show that Johnson’s article was based on notes he jotted in a personal journal sometime in the mid-1990s when he ordered a custom surfboard from Chapman. Johnson’s retelling of his experience was featured in the magazine spread, as well as quotes from other surfers talking about their dealings with Chapman.