Michigan United Conservation Clubs v. CBS News

• Decision Date: 25 February 1980
• Docket Number: No. G75-524 C.A.,G75-524 C.A.
• Citation: 485 F. Supp. 893
• Parties: MICHIGAN UNITED CONSERVATION CLUBS, a Michigan non-profit Corporation, in its own right, and in behalf of its members; Thomas L. Washington, Carl Johnson, Fred Bear, Thomas Anderson and Ben East, in their own right and in behalf of all sport game hunters in the State of Michigan, Plaintiffs, v. CBS NEWS, a Division of CBS, Inc., Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Michigan

485 F. Supp. 893

MICHIGAN UNITED CONSERVATION CLUBS, a Michigan non-profit Corporation, in its own right, and in behalf of its members; Thomas L. Washington, Carl Johnson, Fred Bear, Thomas Anderson and Ben East, in their own right and in behalf of all sport game hunters in the State of Michigan, Plaintiffs, v. CBS NEWS, a Division of CBS, Inc., Defendant.

No. G75-524 C.A.

United States District Court, W. D. Michigan, S. D.

February 25, 1980.

Glassen, Rhead, McLean & Campbell, Neil A. McLean and Harold W. Glassen, Lansing, Mich., of counsel, for plaintiffs.

Varnum, Riddering, Wierengo & Christenson, F. William Hutchinson, Grand Rapids, Mich., Butzel, Long, Gust, Klein & Van-Zile, George E. Brand, Jr., Detroit, Mich., of counsel, for defendant.

OPINION

FOX, Senior District Judge.

Plaintiffs have brought suit against defendant CBS News claiming that they were defamed by two of defendant's television broadcasts concerning the subject of hunting. This case was properly removed from state circuit court, and this court immediately dissolved the state court's injunction which prevented defendant from rebroadcasting the shows. Defendant has now filed a motion for summary judgment alleging that plaintiffs' claims of defamation are not actionable. This will be treated below.

Plaintiffs consist of the Michigan United Conservation Clubs (hereinafter referred to as MUCC), Thomas L. Washington, who is the Executive Director of MUCC, and several sport hunters who reside in Michigan and who claim to represent "more than one million sport hunters and hunting license buyers within the State of Michigan." As stated in its complaint, MUCC is a Michigan non-profit corporation with more than one hundred thousand Michigan members; its corporate purpose is:

To further and advance the cause of the environment and conservation in all phases, and to perpetuate and conserve the fish, game, mineral, air, water, forest and land resources of the state; to so manage the use of all natural resources that this generation and posterity will receive the maximum benefit from the same.

To promote programs designated to educate citizens in the cause of natural resource conservation and environmental protection and enhancement, creating in them an awareness and understanding of the importance of this aim and equipping them to work knowledgeably and effectively toward this achievement.

(Complaint, pp. 1-2.)

Defendant CBS News is a division of Columbia Broadcasting Systems, Inc.—one of the country's largest radio and television broadcasters. Its television programs are transmitted to its affiliate stations, including several in the State of Michigan, and are thereafter broadcast to the public.

Plaintiffs claim that they were defamed by two of defendant's telecasts: "The Guns of Autumn," shown on Friday, September 5, 1975, and "Echoes of `The Guns of Autumn,'" broadcast on Sunday, September 28, 1975. In their brief in opposition to defendant's motion for summary judgment, plaintiffs reemphasize that this is a defamation action and they state how they were defamed by the two broadcasts in question:

Plaintiffs contend that said documentaries were defamatory to them in that they presented only the unfavorable aspects of hunting and did not present the "hunting ethic" practiced by a vast majority of Michigan hunters. Plaintiffs submit that they have personally been embarrassed, maligned and ridiculed as a result of public reaction to said "documentaries."

In its motion for summary judgment, defendant asserts that plaintiffs' claims must be dismissed because neither of its broadcasts were "of and concerning" them.

I.

In reviewing a motion for summary judgment, a court is to read the record in a light most favorable to the non-moving party; is to accept his allegations as true, and is to give him the benefit of the doubt when his assertions conflict with those of the movant. United States v. Diebold, 369 U.S. 654, 82 S.Ct. 993, 8 L.Ed.2d 176 (1962); Bosely v. City of Euclid, 496 F.2d 193, 197 (6th Cir. 1974). After doing all this, the motion for summary judgment should be granted only where it is shown that no issue of material fact exists and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56.

Since a grant of summary judgment will preclude a trial on the merits, it has been said that it should be cautiously invoked. 10 C. A. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice & Procedure, § 2712, at 387 and n. 55 (1973). Courts, however, should not be cowered into timidity for summary judgment can also serve important functions. "Chief among these are avoidance of long and expensive litigation productive of nothing, and curbing the danger that the threat of such litigation will be used to harass or to coerce a settlement." Washington Post Co. v. Keogh, 125 U.S.App.D.C. 32, 35, 365 F.2d 965, 968 (D.C. Cir. 1966).

The Keogh court makes clear that in the First Amendment area courts should not be reluctant to use summary procedures. Id. Similar reasoning was expressed by the district court in Guitar v. Westinghouse Electric Corp., 396 F.Supp. 1042, 1053 (S.D.N.Y. 1975), which stated that "because of the importance of free speech, summary judgment is the `rule' and not the exception, in defamation cases." Accord, Schuster v. U. S. News & World Report, Inc., 459 F.Supp. 973, 975 (D.Minn.1978). The reasoning behind such rulings lies in the realization that if lawsuits could be threatened every time someone advocated an unpopular opinion on a public issue then the exercise of First Amendment rights could be seriously chilled because those who do not have the money to litigate or who merely wish to remain cautious and avoid litigation will employ self-censorship. Public comment and criticism will necessarily become "less uninhibited, less robust, and less wide-open." Washington Post v. Keogh, supra. This would emasculate the very values which the founders of this country were trying to preserve:

The dissemination of the individual's opinions on matters of public interest is for us, in the historic words of the Declaration of Independence, an "unalienable right" that "governments are instituted among men to secure." History shows that the Founders were not always convinced that unlimited discussion of public issues would be "for the benefit of all of us" but they firmly adhered to the proposition that the "true liberty of the press" permitted "every man to publish his opinion."

Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 388 U.S. 130, 149, 87 S.Ct. 1975, 1988, 18 L.Ed.2d 1094 (1967).

II.

During the hearings on defendant's motion, this court had occasion to view the films in question. "The Guns of Autumn" concerns sport hunting and segments were filmed in Michigan. "Echoes of `The Guns of Autumn'" presented the public's reaction to "The Guns of Autumn," and it presented the views of several individuals who disliked the broadcast.

The impact of "The Guns of Autumn" lies in its graphic portrayal of men hunting and killing game animals. The broadcast's opening sequences show hunters at a resort dump in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Bears feed at the dump, and many which were depicted had apparently lost their fear of humans because on the day before bear hunting season began they were feeding from hunters' hands. The next day, however, they were shot when they returned to feed.

This scene was followed by another Michigan bear hunt; this one conducted at a hunting camp attended by men and their sons. On the night before the hunt, the group sat around a campfire and the men stated why they hunt and why they hoped their sons would become hunters. In the morning, the hunt began with the men using dogs, trucks, and two-way radios to track their prey. The hunt ended when they had trapped a bear up a tree and shot it.

A third Michigan scene was filmed on a private game preserve outside Detroit. It showed a hunter shoot a deer and then, as it lay wounded, shoot it several more times at point-blank range to end its agony.

Other segments of the show presented deer hunting in Colorado and Utah; waterfowl hunting on a state-managed wetlands area in Pennsylvania; state supervised and managed buffalo hunting in Arizona, and exotic animal hunting in Texas.

"Echoes of `The Guns of Autumn'" presented the strong, and mostly unfavorable, reactions which people had to "The Guns of Autumn." It started with a statement of the controversy created by the show and the problems which its sponsors had. It presented the views of the following individuals: the vice president of the National Rifle Association, a sportscaster, a director of a Humane Society, an experienced hunter, a gun store proprietor, a United States Senator, a training specialist with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, and hunters in Maine. Also presented were two film clips made by the Remington Arms Company and scenes of a hunter training class.

In their pleadings, plaintiffs do not dispute that what was shown actually occurred and was not staged. They instead claim that CBS intentionally presented only the "slob hunters" whose actions are exceptional and not approved or followed by the general hunting fraternity.

III.

A.

This court will first consider the claims of the four sport hunters who have filed suits in their own behalf and as representatives of the more than one million sport hunters and hunting license buyers in Michigan. Their complaint alleges that CBS conspired with Cleveland Amory, a critic of sport hunting, "to discredit, malign, downgrade, ridicule and vilify the American sport hunter and especially the more than one million sport hunters within the State of Michigan." They continue by stating:

That the aforesaid actions of the defendant C.B.S. have slandered and libeled each and every sport game hunter within the State of Michigan in that he has been ridiculed and endeavored to be placed in disrepute and has been and is embarrassed. That the actions of C.B.S. and the scenes

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