Huggins v. Moore

• Decision Date: 20 December 1999
• Citation: 726 N.E.2d 456,94 N.Y.2d 296,704 N.Y.S.2d 904
• Parties: CHARLES HUGGINS, Respondent, v. MELBA MOORE, Defendant, and THE DAILY NEWS, L.P., et al., Appellants.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

94 N.Y.2d 296

726 N.E.2d 456

704 N.Y.S.2d 904

CHARLES HUGGINS, Respondent, v. MELBA MOORE, Defendant, and THE DAILY NEWS, L.P., et al., Appellants.

Court of Appeals of the State of New York.

Argued November 17, 1999.

Decided December 20, 1999.

Weil, Gotshal & Manges, L. L. P., New York City (R. Bruce Rich, Jonathan Bloom and Elizabeth S. Weiswasser of counsel), and Eve B. Burton for appellants.

Culley, Marks, Tanenbaum, & Pezzulo, Rochester (Bradley C. Rosen and Scott A. Korenbaum of counsel), for respondent.

Rogers & Wells, L. L. P., New York City (Hilary Lane, David A. Schulz and Richard N. Winfield of counsel); David Cohen; Sabin, Bermant & Gould, L. L. P. (Ralph Huber of counsel); Allan Adler; Willkie Farr & Gallagher (Richard L. Klein of counsel); Susanna M. Lowy, Stuart D. Karle; Barbara W. Wall, Arlington, Virginia, Robert J. Hawley, New York City; Bond, Schoeneck & King, L. L. P., Syracuse (S. Paul Battaglia of counsel); Jerry S. Birenz, New York City, Slade R. Metcalf, Alisa D. Shudofsky, Stephen Fuzesi, Jr., Jan Constantine, George Freeman, Adam Liptak and Robin Bierstedt for ABC, Inc. and others, amici curiae.

Chief Judge KAYE and Judges BELLACOSA, SMITH, CIPARICK, WESLEY and ROSENBLATT concur.

OPINION OF THE COURT

LEVINE, J.

Plaintiff Charles Huggins is the former husband of Melba Moore, a popular actress of the musical stage and recording artist, having received a Tony award and two Grammy nominations. Plaintiff brought this defamation action as a result of three articles written by defendant Linda Stasi and published in the "Hot Copy" column of defendant Daily News in 1993. The articles concerned Moore's allegations of plaintiff's betrayal of trust in their personal and financial relationships during the dissolution of their marriage. The series reported how Moore began to speak out as a self-described victim of "economic spousal abuse," because she believed her husband had cheated her out of her interest in the entertainment management company they had built together, leaving her destitute.

The issue on this appeal is whether the content of the three articles was arguably a matter of legitimate public concern, thereby imposing upon plaintiff the burden of proving that defendants were "grossly irresponsible" in writing and publishing them, under Chapadeau v Utica Observer-Dispatch (38 NY2d 196, 199). We conclude that it was.

Melba Moore married plaintiff in 1976. Huggins acted as her professional and personal financial manager while running Hush Productions, Ltd., a firm that managed a number of other nationally known recording artists.

The first article, published June 11, 1993, recounted why Moore believed she could no longer remain silent about her husband's fraudulent procurement of an ex parte divorce in another State using forged documents. The article stated that Moore did not even know she was having marital problems when she received a final divorce decree in the mail. She charged that the surprise divorce was a device for "embezzling [her] out of all of [her] assets." Moore subsequently commenced a divorce action in New York, which invalidated the out-of-State divorce. Nevertheless, Moore said she was left with an inadequate settlement engineered through plaintiff's manipulation of their financial affairs. Even then, Huggins had only paid a fraction of the settlement, all of which went to defray bills and legal fees. Moore claims she was left with no interest in the management company they had started together, and that plaintiff had blackballed her in the entertainment industry. Thus, Moore found herself penniless and without the means to support herself and their daughter.

The second article, published June 28, 1993, stated that speaking out about the abuse she had endured from her husband had "changed everything" for Moore. She accepted an invitation to address the annual convention of 100 Black Men in Atlanta, at which she told the audience, "`I find myself among an epidemic number of women and children who are victims of the black-on-black crime of economic spousal abuse. * * * I find myself compelled to speak out in earnest against the economic bondage, competitiveness, suppression, repression, oppression and physical, psychological and verbal abuse.'" The article described Moore's plans to continue speaking out by "bring[ing] the issues before Congress to gain support for the Battered Women's Advocacy Organization."

On July 9, 1993, one day after Moore had obtained an ex parte temporary order of protection against plaintiff in Family Court, the third article appeared. It reported that Moore had "gotten another order of protection against Huggins, who, she's told us and a judge, was physically abusive to her." Moore also claimed that plaintiff continued to subject her to verbal and economic abuse and to do everything he could to ruin her career. She again described her destitution because of Huggins' misappropriation of the company they founded together.

In an affidavit in support of defendants' motion for summary judgment, Linda Stasi explained that she wrote the articles because she had believed that "the personal saga [Moore] described, in which she had gone from stardom as a Tony Award winning singer and entertainer to the brink of poverty, would be of great interest to [the newspaper's] readers." Stasi "also found her story compelling because it brought to light an important social issue: economic spousal abuse."

Plaintiff originally commenced this libel action against the Daily News, Stasi and Moore, but Moore was severed from the action after she filed for bankruptcy. Supreme Court granted summary judgment to the remaining defendants on the ground that the allegedly defamatory statements were constitutionally protected expressions of opinion, rather than assertions of fact. The Appellate Division modified, holding that several of the statements, in effect accusing plaintiff of various criminal acts, were factual and actionable (253 AD2d 297). As to those statements, the Court held that triable issues of fact existed as to whether Stasi and the Daily News were negligent in publishing them.

The Appellate Division rejected defendants' claim that plaintiff, in order to prevail, was required to meet a standard of gross irresponsibility for the publication of falsehoods in the articles. The Court held that whether statements are a matter of public concern turns "inevitably, on what, at core, is being discussed" (id., at 310 [emphasis supplied]). Concluding that the parties' divorce and the business arrangement incidental thereto were "essentially private affairs" (id., at 310-311), the Appellate Division ruled that no matter of public concern was raised to require proof of a higher standard of fault than negligence. In part, the Court supported its ruling by the holdings of cases that the mere notoriety of a dispute, particularly a divorce, does not turn it into a "public controversy" for constitutionalized defamation purposes (id., at 310, citing Time, Inc. v Firestone, 424 US 448; Waldbaum v Fairchild Publs., 627 F2d 1287; Krauss v Globe Intl., 251 AD2d 191).

The Appellate Division granted defendants leave to appeal upon the certified question of whether its order was properly made. Because we conclude that plaintiff must prove that defendants were grossly irresponsible in publishing any untruths injurious to his reputation in the articles in order to prevail in this libel action, we now reverse the order of the Appellate Division, answer the certified question in the negative and remit to Supreme Court for a review of the parties' submissions and a determination under that standard.

Discussion

In defamation actions against a "public official" or "public figure," a plaintiff must prove the statement was made with "actual malice," i.e., with either knowledge that it was false or reckless disregard for the truth (New York Times Co. v Sullivan, 376 US 254, 279-280; Curtis Publ. Co. v Butts, 388 US 130, 162). Public figures for constitutionalized defamation purposes include "limited-purpose" public figures, those who "have thrust themselves to the forefront of particular public controversies in order to influence the resolution of the issues involved" (Gertz v Robert Welch, Inc., 418 US 323, 345).

Where the defendant is a media publisher or broadcaster and the plaintiff is neither a public official nor a public figure, but the statement involves a matter of public concern, the plaintiff still must prove constitutional malice to recover presumed or punitive damages (id., at 349; Dun & Bradstreet v Greenmoss Bldrs., 472 US 749, 761). As for actual damages, however, "so long as they do not impose liability without fault, the States may define for themselves the appropriate standard of liability for a publisher or broadcaster of defamatory falsehood injurious to a private individual" (Gertz v Robert Welch, Inc., supra, at 347). Thus, at least with respect to a report on a matter of public concern, private plaintiffs suing media defendants for defamation are constitutionally required to show that the defendants were at fault, but the States are given discretion to require a higher degree of culpability than simple negligence (see, 2 NY PJI 3:23, at 150-151 [1999 Supp]).

In response to the Gertz decision, we held in Chapadeau v Utica Observer-Dispatch (38 NY2d 196, supra) that a private plaintiff must prove a publisher's or broadcaster's gross irresponsibility "where the content of the article is arguably within the sphere of legitimate public concern, which is reasonably related to matters warranting public exposition" (id., at 199 [emphasis added]). Thus, when the claimed defamation arguably involves a matter of public concern, a private plaintiff must prove that the media defendant "acted in a grossly irresponsible manner without due consideration for the standards of information gathering and dissemination ordinarily followed by responsible parties" (id.)....