Huckabee v Time Warner Entertainment

• Decision Date: 04 May 2000
• Docket Number: No. 98-1018,98-1018
• Parties: Page 413 19 S.W.3d 413 (Tex. 2000.) Dean Huckabee, Petitioner v. Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P., Respondent IN THE SUPREME COURT OF TEXAS
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

Page 413

19 S.W.3d 413 (Tex. 2000.)

Dean Huckabee, Petitioner v. Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P., Respondent

No. 98-1018

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF TEXAS

Argued November 3, 1999

Decided May 4, 2000

On Petition for Review from the Court of Appeals for the Fourteenth District of Texas

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Chief Justice Phillips delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Justice Enoch, Justice Baker, Justice Abbott, Justice Hankinson, Justice O'Neill, and Justice Gonzales joined.

Justice Owen did not participate in the decision.

We must decide whether a media defendant sued for defamation by a public official is entitled on the facts of this record to summary judgment on the issue of actual malice. Because the defendant produced evidence negating actual malice as a matter of law, and because the plaintiff did not produce controverting evidence raising a fact issue, we affirm the summary judgment granted by the court of appeals. 995 S.W.2d 152.

I

When this claim arose, Charles Dean Huckabee was presiding judge of the 247th District Court of Harris County, which by statute gives preference to family law matters. See Tex. Gov't Code § 24.424. Judge Huckabee claims that Respondent, HBO, defamed him by broadcasting the documentary Women on Trial on its premium cable channel. This hour-long program chronicled four southeast Texas cases in which family courts granted custody of a child to the father after the mother accused the father of child abuse. Three of these cases arose in Harris County, and Judge Huckabee presided over two of them. Judge Huckabee principally claims that the documentary defamed him in its report on his decision regarding the custody of four-year-old Wayne Hebert. See In re the Marriage of Sandra Hebert and Michael Hebert, No. 84-13392, In re John Hebert and Wayne Hebert, Minor Children, No. 88-14873 (consolidated cases)(247th Dist. Ct., Harris County, Tex. Mar. 13-15, 1988)("Hebert").

The Hebert case began in 1988, when Sandra Hebert discovered that Wayne had sustained an injury to his penis. The day before, Wayne had returned from visiting Michael Hebert, his father and Sandra's ex-husband. Wayne had gone with Michael to visit his grandmother's home in Louisiana. Believing that Michael caused Wayne's injury, Sandra consulted with her friend Sherry Turner, a Houston police officer who specialized in sexual abuse cases. Turner, interviewing Wayne alone, videotaped Wayne's statement that Michael had injured him while taking a bath. In two other videotaped interviews, Wayne also told social worker Cheryl Bennett and Child Protective Services caseworker Wilma Smith that Michael caused the injury. After investigating further, Smith concluded that Wayne had been abused, but that the abuser could not be identified. Because Michael was a Houston police officer, the Houston Police Department's Internal Affairs Department also investigated the incident and likewise determined that the abuser could not be identified.

Alleging that Michael had abused Wayne, Sandra moved to modify the custody order to restrict Michael's visitation rights. After a three-day hearing in March 1988, Judge Huckabee rendered a temporary order that not only made Michael rather than Sandra the managing conservator of Wayne, but went on to deny Sandra all access to her child, even though Michael had not sought either of these changes. Sandra unsuccessfully sought a writ of mandamus from the court of appeals to overturn the temporary order. See Hebert v. Huckabee, No. A14-88-00511-CV (Tex. App.-- Houston [14th Dist.], July 14, 1988, orig. proceeding)(not designated for publication). She did not seek a subsequent modification of the order, and it was still in effect when Women on Trial was broadcast in 1992.

In late 1990, Lee Grant, the director of Women on Trial, first began work on a documentary about divorce. Hoping to examine how once happily married couples later ended up in bitter divorces, Grant secured her husband's production company, Joseph Feury Productions (JFP), to produce the film. Grant assigned JFP employee Virginia Cotts to find suitable stories for the program. In March 1991, Cotts met in Houston with Joleen Reynolds, the leader of Citizens Organized for Divorce Ethics and Solutions (CODES), a support group for men and women who felt that the Houston family courts had treated them unfairly. Reynolds discussed a number of cases with Cotts, including the Hebert case. After meeting with Reynolds, Cotts wrote a three-page summary of Sandra Hebert's situation.

Sandra Hebert's story was included along with several others submitted by Cotts and Grant to HBO in April 1991. In her summary of the Hebert story, Cotts included the following bullet points: (1) "Police ex-husband abused son"; (2) "Corrupt Judge gave custody to father/abuser"; (3) and "Sandy lost all rights to see her child." Sandra Hebert's story particularly impressed the HBO executives. After reading it, HBO vice-president Sheila Nevins wrote on her copy: "Great story. Do at once." Nevins's assistant, Cis Wilson, wrote: "Great, sad story." After considering the proposal, HBO agreed to purchase the film. Throughout the rest of the film's production, Cotts and Grant regularly met with Wilson and Nevins.

Cotts and Grant both came to Houston to film interviews. In addition to Joleen Reynolds, Sandra Hebert, and her current and former attorneys, they also interviewed Ivy Raschke, another woman who had been denied access to her children by Judge Huckabee after accusing the children's father of abuse. Cotts also continued her research into other allegations of impropriety in the Harris County family courts, including those reported by local print and broadcast media.

In September 1991, JFP delivered a "rough cut" of the film to HBO. Cotts's contemporaneous status report revealed tension between Lee Grant and Sheila Nevins over the film's direction. Grant apparently wanted to present a broad picture of divorce that showed both the fathers' and the mothers' perspectives, but Nevins wanted a narrower piece that focused on mothers who believed the family court system had treated them unfairly. Nothing in the status report, however, indicated that Grant, Cotts, or anyone at HBO believed anything in the documentary to be false or entertained serious doubts about the truth of any of the film's allegations.

In November 1991, Grant and Cotts returned to Houston and videotaped Judge Huckabee. While Judge Huckabee stated that he could not talk specifically about the Hebert case because it was pending in his court, he did agree to talk about it in "hypothetical" terms. He then explained that all of his decisions in this and other cases were based on the best interests of the children. HBO did not include these statements in the final version. Instead, it aired this response by Judge Huckabee to a question about a "hypothetical" version of the Hebert case:

I have to do what's best for the child. If someone, is, uh, brainwashing the a child to the same extent that it causes psychological and emotional problems with the child, especially coupled with some physical abuse, in my opinion the child has to be removed from that situation.

The broadcast also aired Judge Huckabee's explanation of his criteria for determining when a mother in that situation could see her children again:

Well, if its [sic] a person who has mental health problems, they're going to have to seek mental health, uh, care. If its [sic] a person sexually abusing a child, they're probably going to have to seek mental health care.

Finally, the broadcast aired Judge Huckabee's statement that he took the decision to deny access to a parent very seriously, but that he was satisfied that he had made the correct decision in every case in which he had done so.

The filmmakers also interviewed Dr. Kit Harrison, a psychologist appointed by Judge Huckabee in Hebert and in many other cases. Four months after Judge Huckabee rendered the temporary order denying Sandra Hebert access to Wayne, Dr. Harrison issued a report concluding that Michael had not caused Wayne's injury. Rather, the report concluded that Wayne's older brother John committed the abuse while Wayne was in Sandra's custody. Based on this belief, Dr. Harrison agreed with Judge Huckabee's decision to transfer Wayne to his father's custody and deny Sandra access to the child. Although the final version mentioned Dr. Harrison's recommendation approving of the judge's order, it did not detail Dr. Harrison's reasons.

Finally, Cotts and Grant interviewed Houston attorney Randy Burton, an outspoken critic of the Houston family courts. Among other things, Burton accused the Harris County family court judges of practicing cronyism and disregarding the best interests of the children before them.

After these interviews, Cotts and Grant recut the film to include some of the new footage. From April to September 1991, HBO and JFP's lawyers reviewed the film, finally allowing the film to air in October 1991. HBO also agreed to indemnify JFP should a judgment arise from the film in excess of JFP's errors-and-omissions insurance coverage.

Women on Trial aired on October 28, 1992. In addition to the Sandra Hebert and Ivy Raschke segments, the film included two other stories. In one, another Harris County family district court judge, Allen Daggett, had transferred custody of Mary Frances Parker's child to her ex-husband, a convicted rapist, even though she claimed that he was abusing the child. In the other, Sherry Nance was convicted of murdering her ex-husband and his father after a Bee County jury awarded custody of her son to the ex-husband. Nance claimed that she killed her ex-husband to save her son from continuing sexual abuse. The documentary did not name the judge in the Bee County case.

Judge Huckabee sued HBO, JFP, Grant, and Burton, claiming that they had defamed him both by particular statements and...