Mathis v. Cannon
| Decision Date | 25 November 2002 |
| Docket Number | No. S02G0361.,S02G0361. |
| Citation | 573 S.E.2d 376,276 Ga. 16 |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
| Parties | MATHIS v. CANNON. |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
James W. Hurt, James W. Hurt & Associates, Thomas Harry Hurt, Hurt & Associates, Cordele, for Appellant.
James C. Rawls, Eric Peter Schroeder, Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy, L.L.P.; Jeffrey O. Bramlett, Boudurant, Mixon & Elmore; David E. Hudson, Hull, Towill, Norman, Barrett & Salley; Jamie Nordhaus Shipp, King & Spalding, Atlanta, Amici Appellants.
Michael B. Terry, Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore, L.L.P., Atlanta, amicus curiae for the appellant.
Robert Claude Norman, Jr., Hubert C. Lovein, Jr., Jones, Cork & Miller, Macon, for Appellee.
This libel action involves the interplay between the constitutional right of free speech under the First Amendment and an individual's right to protect his reputation. Bruce Mathis, a Crisp County resident, posted three inflammatory messages about Thomas C. (Chris) Cannon on an Internet bulletin board as part of a local controversy concerning the unprofitable operation of a solid waste recovery facility in Crisp County. Three weeks later, without seeking a retraction, Cannon sued Mathis for libel per se and sought general and punitive damages. The trial court denied summary judgment to Mathis and granted partial summary judgment on liability to Cannon. The Court of Appeals of Georgia affirmed.1 It held that the three messages constituted libel per se, Cannon was not a limited-purpose public figure, and Cannon was not required to seek a retraction before recovering punitive damages. We granted Mathis's petition for certiorari to review whether the court of appeals erred in affirming the trial court's ruling. We conclude that Cannon is a limited-purpose public figure, within the context of the public controversy surrounding the Crisp County facility, and his failure to seek a retraction before filing his complaint precludes him from recovering punitive damages. Therefore, we reverse.
1. OCGA § 9-11-56 provides that a judgment shall be rendered if the record shows that there is no genuine issue of material fact and the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law. In reviewing the trial court's grant of Cannon's motion for partial summary judgment, we must construe the facts in the light most favorable to Mathis, as the person opposing the motion.2
The Solid Waste Management Authority of Crisp County began meeting in March 1994 to develop a project to process and recycle solid waste and create jobs for county residents. Composed of the five Crisp County commissioners and two private citizens, the authority planned to construct a solid waste material recovery facility. The project was designed to separate residential and commercial garbage or solid waste, sell the recyclable "materials of value," and produce commercial compost from the organic materials, with the residual waste being deposited in the county's landfill. Initial projections required the facility to process a minimum of 1,200 tons of solid waste daily (later reduced) to be financially feasible. Because the county did not generate that amount of solid waste, the authority immediately began soliciting commitments from cities and counties to serve as waste providers.
Chris Cannon began attending the authority's monthly meetings in October 1994 as majority owner and president of TransWaste Services, Inc., a company that he had recently formed to collect solid waste in southwest Georgia communities. He became a key player in helping the authority obtain the minimum tonnage of solid waste necessary for financing the project. The authority minutes show that Cannon helped solicit business from prospective cities and counties, negotiated with these communities about the authority's solid waste services, and secured and delivered contracts to them. In addition, his company loaned money to the authority and in one instance directly paid $450,000 on behalf of the authority to the City of Warner Robins to buy equipment that the authority had agreed to purchase to obtain the city's contract. In February 1996, the authority formally approved a 25-year Waste Collection and Transportation Agreement making Cannon's company the exclusive hauler to collect and transport solid waste from the participating communities to Crisp County.
The solid waste recovery plant began operating in May 1998. At its open house in July 1998, the authority described its $70 million facility as "a state-of-the-art-integrated waste processing and composting operation"—"the only one of its kind in the United States." The facility was located on 52 acres and consisted of five buildings, the adjacent county-owned landfill, a composting facility, and a greenhouse.
Despite the optimism and fanfare surrounding the plant's opening, the facility was never able to perform as predicted, failing from the beginning to generate sufficient revenue to cover its expenses. In December 1998, the authority fired its executive director and laid off employees. It subsequently hired a private management firm, which had just been started by former county administrator Bill Goff, to manage the plant.
Because of the plant's continuing financial problems, the authority made several controversial decisions during its first 18 months of operation. Reversing prior policies, for example, the authority voted to accept out-of-state waste and used prison labor for three months until the state attorney general ruled that the practice was illegal. Problems encountered in processing solid waste at the recovery plant forced the authority to divert more waste to the landfill, causing the county-owned landfill to fill up faster than projected. In addition, the authority was not paying TransWaste for its services in collecting and hauling solid waste to the recovery plant or making total payments to the county for the costs of operating the landfill. In July 1999, the county commission voted to raise property taxes based on the costs related to the county's disposal of its garbage, which included a $93,600 monthly fee due to the authority.
These problems caused several county residents to form a citizens' group, the Crisp Watchdogs. Members of that group and other residents, including Mathis, regularly attended authority and commission meetings, asked critical questions, and made negative statements about the authority's operations and finances. The Crisp Watchdogs announced a recall effort against three county commissioners, and a grand jury began investigating the authority.
In September 1999, three separate events highlighted the authority's troubled operations. First, authority members learned at their monthly meeting that the facility was still not profitable despite performing at its top capacity. Goff reported that the recovery plant was operating at its maximum capacity, which was only 75 percent of the advertised production goals, and was generating an average value of $12 per ton of recycled materials from municipal solid waste or wet garbage, which was well below the projected value of $38 to $42 per ton. Second, the county commission voted to expand the county landfill to accommodate the 550 tons of waste that Cannon's company, TransWaste, was hauling into the county daily under the authority's contracts with other cities and counties. Third, TransWaste sued the authority for $2.25 million that the authority owed under a promissory note and its contract with TransWaste.
On November 1, the grand jury issued a report recommending that the authority do a better job informing the public about its finances, operations, and plans. Three days later, TransWaste stopped all deliveries of solid waste to the recovery plant after Cannon learned that the authority had paid $220,000 to the county instead of paying towards its debt with TransWaste. Cannon's decision to stop deliveries to the authority precipitated a crisis.
That evening, by coincidence, Mathis posted three messages on Yahoo's electronic message board for Waste Industries, Inc., the company that acquired TransWaste through a merger. Mathis had just read the grand jury's report and the news articles about it. His first message, posted at 11:14 p.m., stated:
The second message, posted at 11:27 p.m., stated:
The third message, posted at 11:52 p.m., stated:
On November 9, the authority met in an emergency executive session to discuss the TransWaste litigation. Two days later, the authority held a specially called public meeting at which it asked Cannon to appear. Before discussing the lack of deliveries, the authority's chairman read a letter from Goff terminating his firm's management of the solid waste recovery facility, effective immediately, because his management team had been excluded from the authority's recent executive sessions. On November 12, the authority voted to reduce its operations and laid off three-fourths of its employees to meet its payroll. As one member described the situation, "[W]e don't have the money, the county is not getting paid, the hauler is not getting paid, we don't have...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Am. Civil Liberties Union, Inc. v. Zeh
...at least to negligence; and (4) special harm or the actionability of the statement irrespective of special harm. Mathis v. Cannon , 276 Ga. 16, 20-21, 573 S.E.2d 376 (2002) (citation and punctuation omitted).4 As to the third element, a plaintiff's status as a "private" or "public" figure d......
-
Wayment v. Clear Channel Broadcasting, Inc.
...operation of its solid waste recovery facility and resulting strain on the county's resources and its taxpayers," Mathis v. Cannon, 276 Ga. 16, 573 S.E.2d 376, 381-82 (2002); "the AIDS epidemic, its victims' ordinary right to keep their medical records confidential, and the dangers to publi......
-
Mar–jac Poultry Inc. v. Katz
...at least to negligence; and (4) special harm or the actionability of the statement irrespective of special harm.” Mathis v. Cannon, 276 Ga. 16, 573 S.E.2d 376, 380 (2002) (internal quotation marks omitted). Damages are inferred when a plaintiff proves defamation per se, whereas a plaintiff ......
-
Bierman v. Weier
...failed to request a retraction from the defendant who posted a libelous statement on an electronic message board. Mathis v. Cannon, 276 Ga. 16, 573 S.E.2d 376, 384–85 (2002) (noting the distinction between media and nonmedia defendants in that case is “difficult to apply” and “fails to acco......
-
Trial Practice and Procedure - Jason Crawford, Matthew E. Cook, J. Clay Fuller, Michael A. Eddings, and Dustin T. Brown
...at 430. 147. Id. at 383, 574 S.E.2d at 430. 148. 259 Ga. App. 225, 576 S.E.2d 625 (2003). 149. Id. at 226, 576 S.E.2d at 626. 150. Id. 151. 276 Ga. 16, 573 S.E.2d 376 (2002). 152. Id. at 22-23, 573 S.E.2d at 381. 153. Id. at 16, 573 S.E.2d at 377. 154. Id. at 22, 573 S.E.2d at 381. 155. Ger......
-
Torts - Deron R. Hicks and Travis C. Hargrove
...(3) "the defendant's fault in publishing it," and (4) "the plaintiff's actual injury from the statement." Id. (citing Mathis v. Cannon, 276 Ga. 16, 20-21, 573 S.E.2d 376, 380 (2002)). 29. Id. at 261, 677 S.E.2d at 153. 30. Id. 31. Id., 677 S.E.2d at 153-54. 32. Id., 677 S.E.2d at 154 (quoti......
-
Room for Error Online: Revising Georgia’s Retraction Statute to Accommodate the Rise of Internet Media
...Laws 343, 344. By 1960, the statute had been reworded to "newspaper or other publication." 1960 Ga. Laws 198, 199. 11. Mathis v. Cannon, 573 S.E.2d 376, 385 (Ga. 2002) ("[W]e construe the word 'publication' in . . . the retraction statute as meaning a communication made to any person other ......