Eyal v. Helen Broadcasting Corp.

• Decision Date: 19 December 1991
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court
• Parties: , 19 Media L. Rep. 1989 Haim EYAL & another 1 v. The HELEN BROADCASTING CORP. & another 2 .

Page 228

583 N.E.2d 228

411 Mass. 426, 19 Media L. Rep. 1989

Haim EYAL & another ¹ v. The HELEN BROADCASTING CORP. & another ².

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts,

Norfolk.

Argued Oct. 9, 1991.

Decided Dec. 19, 1991.

Robert L. Sheketoff, Boston (Marshall Newman with him), for plaintiffs.

Eugene R. Richard, Boston, for defendants.

Before LIACOS, C.J., and WILKINS, LYNCH, O'CONNOR and GREANEY, JJ. GREANEY, Justice.

The plaintiffs, Haim Eyal (Eyal) and Haim's Delicatessen, Inc. (corporation), brought an action in the Superior Court seeking damages from the defendants, The Helen Broadcasting Corp. and Robert McMahon, for defamation. ³ The defendants filed a motion to dismiss the plaintiffs' amended complaint pursuant to Mass.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6), 365 Mass. 754 (1974), on the ground that the plaintiffs' complaint was inadequate to state claims for defamation. A judge of the Superior Court allowed the motion to dismiss and reported the correctness of his ruling to the Appeals Court. ⁴ Mass.R.Civ.P. 64, 365 Mass. 831 (1974). We transferred the case to this court on our own motion. We conclude that the claim brought by Eyal should not have been dismissed, and that the claim brought by the corporation was correctly dismissed.

The amended complaint states the following. Eyal resides in Brookline. He is the owner of the corporation which has a principal place of business at 1657 Beacon Street in Brookline, and conducts business under the name and style of "Haim's Deli." The Helen Broadcasting Corp. operates radio station WEEI, which broadcasts in the Boston area and throughout New England. McMahon is a member of the staff and a news reporter for WEEI. Prior to the events giving rise to this case, both Eyal and the corporation enjoyed good reputations among restaurateurs and others for honesty, integrity, good character, and forthrightness in business and personal affairs.

McMahon and WEEI "on or about April 29, 1988, ... maliciously and negligently composed, wrote and transmitted via broadcasts ... the following false and defamatory statement of and concerning [the] [p]laintiffs: 'The owner of a Brookline [d]elicatessen and seven other people are arrested in connection with an international cocaine ring.' " The broadcasts were "numerous," and were aired in the context of "extreme media attention to the story" some of which the amended complaint describes as noted below. ⁵ Had WEEI and McMahon, at the time of composing, writing, and transmitting the story, "exercised reasonable care," they "could have ascertained that the allegations announced by them in the numerous radio broadcasts ... were false and defamatory."

The amended complaint goes on to allege that the "[d]efendants WEEI and McMahon, [were at fault] in so composing, writing and transmitting the radio broadcasts ... and were meaning and intending to convey and actually conveyed the meaning in the broadcasts that the [p]laintiff[s] ... [were] involved in criminal activity, to wit: being ... member[s] of an international cocaine ring; being actively involved in drug trafficking; operating Haim's Deli as a front for a gang of cocaine drug dealers, and have held the [p]laintiff[s] ... up to ridicule, scorn, hatred and contempt."

We examine the sufficiency of the above claims in light of the principles that: (a) the allegations in the complaint, as well as such reasonable inferences as may be drawn therefrom in favor of Eyal, are to be taken as true, Balsavich v. Local Union 170 of the Int'l Bhd. of Teamsters, 371 Mass. 283, 287, 356 N.E.2d 1217 (1976); Druker v. Roland Wm. Jutras Assocs., 370 Mass. 383, 385, 348 N.E.2d 763 (1976), and (b) a complaint is sufficient "unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief." Nader v. Citron, 372 Mass. 96, 98, 360 N.E.2d 870 (1977), quoting Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 101-102, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957).

1. Claim by Eyal. A false statement that a person has been arrested for criminal involvement in an international cocaine ring falls within the definition of a defamatory statement. See Poland v. Post Publishing Co., 330 Mass. 701, 704, 116 N.E.2d 860 (1953) ("Words may be found to be defamatory if they hold the plaintiff up to contempt, hatred, scorn, or ridicule, or tend to impair his standing in the community"). To succeed, however, on an action for defamation, a plaintiff must additionally show that the alleged defamatory statement published by the defendant was "of and concerning" the plaintiff. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 288, 292, 84 S.Ct. 710, 730, 732, 11 L.Ed.2d 686 (1964). New England Tractor-Trailer Training of Conn., Inc. v. Globe Newspaper Co., 395 Mass. 471, 474, 480 N.E.2d 1005 1985), and cases cited. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 558 (1977). The statement made by the defendants in this case and allegedly repeated on several occasions--"The owner of a Brookline Delicatessen and seven other people were arrested in connection with an international cocaine ring"--did not mention Eyal by name. The critical inquiry, therefore, is whether, in light of the standards governing a motion under rule 12(b)(6) set forth above, which generally operate in a plaintiff's favor, Eyal has alleged enough to meet the "of and concerning" requirement for defamation of a private person. ⁶

In New England Tractor-Trailer Training of Conn., Inc., supra, we held that a defamation plaintiff could prove that the defendant's words were "of and concerning" him by showing "either that the defendant intended its words to refer to the plaintiff and that they were so understood, or that the defendant's words reasonably could be interpreted to refer to the plaintiff and that the defendant was negligent in publishing them in such a way that they could be so understood" (emphasis in original). Id. at 483, 480 N.E.2d 1005. See ELM Medical Laboratory, Inc. v. RKO Gen., Inc., 403 Mass. 779, 784-785, 532 N.E.2d 675 (1988); Restatement (Second) of Torts, supra at § 564 comment a. As can be seen, this articulation of the test poses alternative standards, the first subjective in nature and the second objective.

Eyal alleged in his amended complaint that the statement that had been composed and transmitted by the defendants was actually intended by them to apply to him and was so understood by a significant number of Brookline residents. These assertions are to be taken as true, notwithstanding expressions of denial and incredulousness as to ultimate proof by the defendants. "If the defendant intends to refer to a particular person, the communication will be deemed 'of and concerning' that person, if it is so understood by the recipient of the communication, no matter how bizarre or extraordinary it is that the communication was in fact so understood. This is simply an application of the very expansive construction of proximate cause that the law of torts has always granted in intentional conduct situations; the defendant cannot complain that his intended result was accomplished through a circuitous route. '[I]t is unimportant that the recipient was extraordinarily perceptive, and that Sherlock Holmes himself would not have identified the plaintiff as being the person described.' " (Emphasis in original) (Footnotes omitted). R.A. Smolla, Law of Defamation § 4.09 (1991). For rule 12(b)(6) purposes, Eyal's amended complaint alleged enough to satisfy the subjective standard described above for the "of and concerning" element of defamation.

The amended complaint was also sufficient to satisfy the objective standard. Eyal alleged that Brookline residents would have understood the defendants' statements as applying to him because the statement was composed and transmitted in the context of "extreme media attention" to the story which the amended complaint set forth in some detail. See note 5, supra. He further alleged: (1) that, had the defendants exercised reasonable care, they could have ascertained the statement to be false, (2) that the defendants nevertheless went ahead and published it "negligently," and (3) that they did so on "numerous" occasions "on or about April 29, 1988." Under these allegations, Eyal could prove, for example, that the defendants were aware of the other print and electronic media stories about the arrests, that they either took their statement from those sources, or continued to broadcast it with knowledge of the other stories (in either event without regard to accuracy), and that the defendants reasonably should have anticipated that WEEI listeners, based on the widespread attention to the story that had developed, and continued to develop, would identify Eyal as the Brookline delicatessen owner who had been arrested. Other combinations of facts may also be proved under the amended complaint which could establish the "of and concerning" element under the objective standard described in New England Tractor-Trailer Training of Conn., Inc., supra. At this very preliminary stage, it does not appear beyond doubt that Eyal will be unable to prove a set of facts that would support a finding that the defendants' statements were "of and concerning him" under this standard. Eyal's claim in the amended complaint against the defendants, therefore, is a good pleading as to that theory as well, and defects, if any, in his ultimate proof will have to await exposure at the summary judgment stage or later. ⁷ 2. Claim by the corporation. The corporation argues that the statement made by the defendants could be understood to be "of and concerning" it because the other media coverage of the story, see note 5, supra, directed attention to the delicatessen as the place where the alleged "Israeli Mafia" met and planned crimes. However, the context in which the defendants' statement was spoken and received has importance only if the statement itself can be reasonably susceptible of a defamatory meaning as to...