Rinaldi v. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc.

• Decision Date: 14 July 1977
• Citation: 42 N.Y.2d 369,397 N.Y.S.2d 943
• Parties: , 366 N.E.2d 1299, 2 Media L. Rep. 2169 Dominic S. RINALDI, Respondent, v. HOLT, RINEHART & WINSTON, INC., et al., Appellants, et al., Defendants.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 943

397 N.Y.S.2d 943

42 N.Y.2d 369, 366 N.E.2d 1299, 2

Media L. Rep. 2169

Dominic S. RINALDI, Respondent, v. HOLT, RINEHART & WINSTON, INC., et al., Appellants, et al Defendants.

Court of Appeals of New York.

July 14, 1977.

Carleton G. Eldridge, Jr., John M. Keene, III, and Jerry Slater, New York City, for Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., appellant.

Victor A. Kovner, Heather Grant Florence and Robert C. Bickford, New York City, for Jack Newfield, appellant.

Irwin N. Wilpon, Brooklyn, for respondent.

Henry R. Kaufman, Ira M. Millstein and R. Bruce Rich, New York City, for Association of American Publishers, Inc., and another, amici curiae.

JASEN, Judge.

This is an action for defamation. The plaintiff is a Justice of the Supreme Court, Second Judicial District. His complaint alleges that he was libeled in the book, "Cruel and Unusual Justice", authored by defendant Jack Newfield and published by defendant Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc. After extensive pretrial discovery, defendants moved for summary judgment. Their motion was denied by Special Term. The Appellate Division, by a closely divided court, affirmed (53 A.D.2d 839, 386 N.Y.S.2d 818), but granted defendants leave to appeal to our court upon a certified question.

The issue before us is whether plaintiff has established the existence of material facts sufficient to create a triable issue on his libel cause of action. More specifically, resolution of this appeal turns on whether plaintiff, a public official, has set forth facts sufficient to generate a triable issue on the constitutional elements of the libel complaint. (New York Times C v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S.Ct. 710, 11 L.Ed.2d 686.) We hold that defendants motions for summary judgment should have been granted and, therefore, the order of the Appellate Division should be reversed.

Jack Newfield is a controversial, well-known, investigative journalist. In 1972, Newfield focused his attentions on the criminal justice system in New York State, with particular emphasis on the administration of criminal justice in New York City. In the fall of 1972, he authored five articles on judicial conduct which appeared in the Village Voice, a weekly newspaper. An additional article, "The Ten Worst Judges in New York", was published in New York Magazine. The thrust of these articles was that Judges in the New York City courts were selected for political reasons and not on the merits of their qualifications for judicial office. Several Judges, identified by name, were described as incompetent or corrupt, and several decisions rendered by these Judges were cited by the author to illustrate his criticisms. The author contended that these Judges were lenient on defendants with political influence and with defendants charged with distribution of significant amounts of narcotics. By contrast, it was asserted, these same Judges were too harsh on defendants from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially on common narcotics addicts charged with comparatively minor offenses. Newfield advocated the removal of these Judges from the Bench and called for over-all reform of the method of selecting Judges. Listed as among the 10 worst Judges in New York was plaintiff. The Newfield articles were highly critical of plaintiff's judicial performance.

Prior to the publication of the Newfield series, a separate news article appeared in the New York Daily News reporting that Justice Rinaldi was one of four Judges accused by the Joint Legislative Committee on Crime of handing down "wrist-slap" sentences in felony narcotics cases. During the time that the Newfield articles were appearing, the New York Times published a news story that plaintiff had sentenced an organized crime figure, charged with bribery of a police officer, to a fine of $250, while, on that same day, he imposed a sentence of imprisonment, with a maximum of five years, on a 19-year-old youth alleged to have robbed a drugstore.

In May, 1973, plaintiff brought an action against the Village Voice and its advertising agency for libel and invasion of privacy committed in an advertisement for the Voice which appeared in the New York Times. The advertisement contain a caricature of the plaintiff and the text referred to the first of the original articles in the Newfield series. Defendants' motion for summary judgment was denied and the action was subsequently settled before trial. (See Rinaldi v. Village Voice, 47 A.D.2d 180, 365 N.Y.S.2d 570 cert. den., 423 U.S. 883, 96 S.Ct. 153, 46 L.Ed.2d 112.) The complaint was predicated on the assertion that, after publication of the original articles, the Voice received information which refuted Newfield's allegations of misconduct.

Plaintiff was indicted, on November 13, 1973, by the Extraordinary Special Grand Jury of Kings County on two counts of perjury committed before the Grand Jury. The Grand Jury had been investigating Justice Rinaldi's disposition of two cases unrelated to those reported earlier by Newfield. Upon indictment, plaintiff was suspended from performance of judicial duties. He was acquitted of these charges in August, 1974, and was reelected to the Supreme Court, without opposition, in November, 1974.

During the pendency of the criminal charges against plaintiff, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., a publishing house, published a book by Jack Newfield entitled "Cruel and Unusual Justice". The book consisted largely of reprints of Newfield's original Voice and New York Magazine article. The articles were edited slightly for style and form during the course of preparation of the book and were updated through the addition of postscripts. The book is divided into two parts. The first part, "Prisons", related to a description of alleged abuses committed in various penitentiaries located in New York State. The latter portion of the book, "Courts", contains the reprints of Newfield's original series on judicial performance and selection in New York City.

Plaintiff commenced this action for libel against Newfield, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, and the Village Voice. Special Term granted summary judgment to the Voice on the ground that the Voice had merely acquiesced in the republication of the alleged libel. However, motions by the other two defendants for summary judgment were denied. On cross appeals, the Appellate Division affirmed. The only issue presented to our court is whether the separate motions for summary judgment of defendants Newfield and Holt, Rinehart & Winston were properly denied.

Plaintiff alleged, in his complaint, that defendants maliciously published false, scandalous and defamatory matter by which defendants meant "that the plaintiff was and is a corrupt, venal, biased, incompetent and unqualified justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York who should be removed from office." The particular statements in each chapter contended to be objectionable may be briefly excerpted and summarized. Importantly, the passages of the book to which we refer are only those specifically put at issue by the plaintiff's complaint. Equally important, the passages that are at issue contain serious charges that have never been substantiated in a court of law. The ultimate truth of the Newfield charges has never been determined. Of the greatest significance, and an important caveat, our references to, and discussion of, the Newfield charges at the root of this case, in no way reflect any view as to the accuracy, or even the legitimacy of the extremely grave accusations that have been made by Newfield against the plaintiff.

In a chapter entitled, "The Ten Worst Judges in New York", Newfield wrote that plaintiff "is very tough on long-haired attorneys and black defendants, especially on questions of bail, probation, and sentencing. But his judicial temper softens remarkably before heroin dealers and organized crime figures." Newfield set forth three illustrative cases. In August, 1972, a narcotics distributor, named Norman Burton, with a history of 12 prior arrests, had been held on a charge of heroin possession and on a charge of attempted bribery of a police officer. Plaintiff released Burton without bail. In October, 1970, another narcotics dealer, Clifton Glover, had been permitted to plead guilty and was then given a conditional discharge. Glover could have received a maximum sentence of 25 years' imprisonment. Glover had been charged with a class C felony for which the statute specifically prohibited the imposition of conditional discharges. The third case, People v. Vario, arose in Suffolk County, where plaintiff was assigned for the summer of 1967. Plaintiff "caused a local scandal" by permitting three prominent organized crime figures, charged with bribery and conspiracy, to plead guilty to misdemeanors and assessing only $250 fines. The prosecutor had recommended that the three each serve at least one year in prison.

In a second chapter, "Justice Gets a Fix", Newfield again reported plaintiff's dispositions in People v. Burton and People v. Glover. With reference to his release of Burton without bail, it was stated, "(t)his was not the first time Judge Rinaldi has let a heroin dealer go free. He has a reputation among lawyers and court reformers for going soft on pushers, especial when they are represented by certain well-connected bail bondsmen and lawyers". Newfield wrote that "what Judge Rinaldi is doing is no small thing. He is putting people on the street who sell death for a profit." It was reported that, in the Burton case, plaintiff "abused" the officer who had reported the bribery attempt.

Newfield stated that he had spent several weeks carefully analyzing records of plaintiff's previous dispositions. Newfield detected a "disturbing pattern". "Blacks and Puerto Ricans got high bail and long sentences. Defendants connected with organized crime families were treated permissively motions granted, misdemeanor pleas accepted, suspended sentences given, fines imposed instead of...