Libel suits against New York Times dwindle to zero

Up against Times v. Sullivan and the cost of a lawsuit of some duration, lawyers are reluctant to take up libel suits against national publications. -db

ABA Journal
October 1, 2010
By Ed Finkel

During his 30 years as a lawyer for the New York Times Co., George Freeman says, the “Gray Lady” faced four to five new libel suits per year, on average, and has had maybe eight pending against it at any one time. But that’s all changed.

Currently the New York Times is facing no libel suits, and the parent company faces just one in the U.S. “There’s been a fairly steep decline” in the last few years, he says. “The real question is whether it’s cyclical, as sometimes happens, although never quite to this degree, or whether there are other factors at play.”

The Times is definitely not alone, and the trend appears to have rolled out over two or three decades—not years—according to research from the Media Law Resource Center. The number of trials of libel, privacy and related claims against the media fell from 266 in the ’80s to 192 in the ’90s to 124 in the 2000s. In 2009, only nine such trials were held.

Sandy Baron, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center in New York City, says the decline seems steepest among larger, more national publications. “When you get to more local media outlets, you may find that the decrease has not been particularly significant—if, indeed, there’s been a decrease at all,” she says.

Media lawyers have a variety of explanations. Court decisions dating back to 1964’s New York Times v. Sullivan have made succeeding in libel cases a tough slog, says Lucian Pera, a partner with Adams and Reese in Memphis, Tenn. “The law is simply unfriendly to plaintiffs,” says Pera, who represents only defendants but gets occasional calls from would-be plaintiffs, whom he usually tries to dissuade. “The difficulty and cost of bringing a libel suit is extreme.”

Plaintiffs lawyers typically take such cases on contingency, which means they’re weighing their chances vis-à-vis personal injury, medical malpractice and other cases when deciding what to put on their dockets.

“Serious potential plaintiffs counsel who take a hard look at the outcome of libel litigation over the last few decades … realize it’s not a great economic bet,” Baron says. “Another thing sophisticated plaintiffs lawyers have figured out is that the media is not quick to settle.”

Recession-driven budget cuts and the rise of online media, with its still-uncertain business model, have reduced the chances for controversy, says Houston lawyer David A. Furlow of Thompson & Knight, a former chair of the ABA’s Media, Privacy and Defamation Law Committee.

“That’s had the effect of limiting the funds available for the sort of muckraking, groundbreaking investigations that seem to draw defamation suits like streetlights draw June bugs,” he says.

Freeman thinks the Internet changes the playing field by providing for quick corrections. “They’re much more likely to be vindicated by having an editor correct it within minutes of its going online,” he says. “Then the person feels they were listened to.”

If a correction isn’t quickly run, a company can self-publish one on its website, says Stuart Karle, a New York City lawyer and former attorney for the Wall Street Journal.

“You can go out immediately with your own version of events,” he says. “There’s no reason you have to sit around and wait for the days it takes to make a correction—or the years it takes to win a libel claim.”

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2 Comments

  • Hooray for decreased litigiousness! And responsible journalists’ timely corrections – those professional journalists on their game, making us amateurs look bad.

    But if the “…rise of online media, with its still-uncertain business model, have reduced the chances for controversy” I am glad to blog for the cause at http://www.allmediaLP.com – even though I dont see the direct correlation.

    Even if the decrease in suits is partially a by-product of downsizing and economic hardship, I declare it is a silver lining. Less money to draw a suit on one side, less money to sue on the other… the only people who lose are the lawyers, and I doubt anyone is bemoaning that.

  • The Boston Herald is facing one helluva Defamation case, and it’s open shut.

    Joanna Marinova v. Boston Herald et al., Suffolk Superior 2010-01316

    A woman with impeccable scholastic and professional experiences who was with a State Rep investigating prison abuse was falsely accused of having sex with an inmate and not being allowed to be on premises. She was never charged with sex and the sexual misconduct charges against him were DISMISSED, and the paper knew all about it.

    She had also signed up 2 days prior to the visit, and was a regular visitor there and the paper knew all about that as well, PRIOR TO PUBLICATION.

    Then Channel 7 parroted the Defamation so I got them sued too, along with Sunbeam Management. The Channel 7 reporter showed up in Plaintiff’s neighborhood asking neighbors if they had seen her, “she was having sex with inmates…..”

    Whoops. They kissed and hugged just as do all of the other visitors, but this particular inmate, Darrell Jones, is likely a wrongful conviction and he is a prison activist who has been honored on TV shows and in the media when he discussed recidivism, but when he turned the focus toward the prison system, whammo, out came the retaliation.

    I know because I researched it, blogged it, got the Plaintiff the strongest media counsel in Boston and just made a movie out of my visit to the Courthouse to check the preliminary pleadings that now include all of the relevant emails.

    Take a look:

    http://christopher-king.blogspot.com/2010/10/joanna-marinova-v-boston-herald-et-al.html

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1x3dn_YGnU

    12 October 2010

    Joanna Marinova v. Boston Herald et al. Defamation case updates: Jessica Van Sack and Byron Barnett are in Big Trouble.

    The back story part one and part two, along with KingCast audio from TOUCH 106.1 FM, with Plaintiff above. Part two is a direct response with three (3) different empirical DOC studies that I sent to an anonymous DOC poster who wrote in to the Boston Phoenix, ripped him but GOOD.

    The bottom line is that Jessica Van Sack had direct knowledge before she wrote and published the story “Fox in the Hen House,” that she was using illegally-obtained information. Why she did it, and why she thought she could get away with it is anyone’s guess. That is why the Boston Herald Attorneys at Brown, Rudnick have embarked on a scorched-Earth policy in this litigation, going so far as to issue subpoenas to Plaintiff’s mother, even though her Affidavit confirms that she had no knowledge of the events at hand.

    The Parties have also filed three (3) subpoena duces tecum….. [snip]

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