Libel

1
Libel

A false allegation of fact disseminated about a
person that tends to injure that persons
reputation
2
Defamation

• Communication that unjustly harms the reputation
  of another person.
• Injures a persons reputation and lowers the
  communitys regard by holding that person up to
  contempt, ridicule or hatred.

3
Libel

• Libel Per Se
• Words that everyone would recognize as libelous.
• Legal term Libelous on their face
• Libel Pro Quod
• Words that, taken in context, may be libelous.

4
Libel in Montana

• Montana Code Annotated
• Libel defined MCA 27-1-802
• Libel is a false and unprivileged publication by
  writing, printing, picture, effigy, or other
  fixed representation to the eye which exposes any
  person to hatred, contempt, ridicule, or obloquy
  or which causes him to be shunned or avoided or
  which has a tendency to injure him in his
  occupation.

5
Slander in Montana

• 27-1-803. Slander defined. Slander is a false and
  unprivileged publication other than libel which
• (1) charges any person with crime or with having
  been indicted, convicted, or punished for crime
• (2) imputes in him the present existence of an
  infectious, contagious, or loathsome disease
• (3) tends directly to injure him in respect to
  his office, profession, trade, or business,
  either by imputing to him general
  disqualification in those respects which the
  office or other occupation peculiarly requires or
  by imputing something with reference to his
  office, profession, trade, or business that has a
  natural tendency to lessen its profit ?
• (4) imputes to him impotence or want of chastity
  or ?
• (5) by natural consequence causes actual damage.

6
Elements of libel

• Defamatory content
• Falsity
• Publication
• Identification
• Fault
• Harm

7
Fault

• Negligence
• A smaller degree of fault
• Includes failure to exercise reasonable care
• In many states, private persons must prove it

• Actual malice
• who must prove it?
• Public officials
• Public figures
• In some states, private individuals

8
New York Times v. Sullivan
9
New York Times v. Sullivan
L.B. Sullivan sued for 500,000
Gov. John M. Patterson sued for 1 million
10
New York Times v. Sullivan

• Anthony Lewis, Make No Law
• Sullivans real target was the role of the
  American press as an agent of democratic change.
  He and the other Southern officials who had sued
  the Times for libel were trying to choke off a
  process that was educating the country about the
  nature of racism and was affecting political
  attitudes on that issue. Thus in the broadest
  sense the libel suits were a challenge to the
  principles of the First Amendment.

11
New York Times v. Sullivan

• Justice William J. Brennan, U.S. Supreme Court
  1956-1990
• We consider this case against the background of
  a profound national commitment to the principle
  that debate on public issues should be
  uninhibited, robust, and wide-open