Troman v. Wood

• Decision Date: 25 November 1975
• Docket Number: No. 47429,47429
• Citation: 62 Ill.2d 184,340 N.E.2d 292
• Parties: Mary TROMAN, Appellant, v. Kingsley WOOD et al. (Field Enterprises, Inc., Appellee.)
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

Page 292

340 N.E.2d 292

62 Ill.2d 184

Mary TROMAN, Appellant, v. Kingsley WOOD et al. (Field Enterprises, Inc., Appellee.)

No. 47429.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Nov. 25, 1975.

Rehearing Denied Jan. 22, 1976.

George C. Pontikes and Irving M. Funk, of Foss, Schuman & Drake, Chicago, for appellant.

A. Daniel Feldman, C. Richard Johnson, and James N. Nowacki, Chicago (Isham, Lincoln & Beale, Chicago, of counsel), for appellee.

SCHAEFER, Justice.

The plaintiff, Mary Troman, filed this action in the circuit court of Cook County to recover actual damages from Kingsley Wood, a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, and Field Enterprises, Inc., the publisher of that newspaper. The complaint alleged that the plaintiff suffered injury to her reputation caused by the publication of an article in the Chicago Sun-Times on August 26, 1973. Although the article appeared over the by-line of Wood, he was dismissed from the case pursuant to a stipulation between the other parties, and the sole defendant is Field Enterprises, Inc.

The defendant's motion to dismiss the complaint was granted, and we have transferred the plaintiff's appeal to this court under Rule 302(b).

The newspaper article related to a series of burglaries and other criminal activities by a gang of youths operating in an area on the northwest side of Chicago, and to actions taken by a local community group to counteract the gang's activities by encouraging witnesses and victimes of crimes to sign complaints and to attend the ensuing court proceedings.

In the course of the article one local resident was quoted as stating to the reporter, 'Ten years ago, I became very friendly with the family that moved into what became the gang headquarters.' A second resident was quoted as stating, 'The gang stole us blind. On time after my husband had paid them for painting and stripping his basement, he returned home to find one TV set gone. You know where it was? It was in the basement of the gang house.'

Although it had not appeared in earlier editions of the paper, in one edition the article carried a photograph of a house which bore the following caption: 'Home of Mrs. Mary Troman at 5832 N. Wayne. Thomas Troman testified that he is a member of the gang.' The article did not specify the relationship of Thomas Troman to the plaintiff, nor did either the article or the caption expressly identify plaintiff's home as the location of gang headquarters. The complaint alleged, however, that the article and the picture, taken together, were understood by readers as meaning that the plaintiff's home served as headquarters for the gang, and that the plaintiff was in some manner associated with the gang.

The central issue on this appeal concerns the standard of liability which should be imposed for libel in the light of the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974), 418 U.S. 323, 94 S.Ct. 2997, 41 L.Ed.2d 789. Before taking up that issue, however, we consider the claim, advanced as one ground of defendant's motion to dismiss, that the article was not 'of and concerning' the plaintiff.

In our opinion the reference to the plaintiff by name and the photograph of a house identified as her residence comple the rejection of defendant's contention. Unlike John v. Tribune Co. (1962), 24 Ill.2d 437, 181 N.E.2d 105, no question arises here as to the identity of the person referred to by the article. Whether the article was in fact understood by readers to refer to the plaintiff might ultimately be a question for the jury, should there be controversy on that matter. But preliminary determination whether the article is capable of being so understood is a question of law which must, upon the motion to dismiss in this case, be resolved in favor of the plaintiff. (Cf. Ogren v. Rockford Star Printing Co. (1919), 288 Ill. 405, 413--414; Restatement of Torts, Second, Tentative Draft No. 21, April 5, 1975, sec. 613(1)(c), Comment d.) We reach the same conclusion with respect to defendant's claim that the article is not defamatory of the plaintiff. If the article were read as meaning that the plaintiff allowed her house to be used as a headquarters for persons engaging in criminal acts or for storage of stolen goods, it can hardly be doubted that her reputation would be injured. Whether the article was in fact so understood is a question which must await the presentation of evidence.

We reach, then, the question whether the complaint states a cause of action for defamation in the light of the applicable constitutional limitations laid down by the Supreme Court. Prior to New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S.Ct. 710, 11 L.Ed.2d 686, decided in 1964, a defamatory publication concerning another rendered its publisher liable, under common law principles, on a basis of strict liability. Neither lack of malicious intent nor the absence of negligence on defendant's part constituted a defense. See Restatement of Torts (1938), sec. 580; Prosser, Law of Torts, sec. 113 (4th ed. 1971).

In the New York Times case, however, the Supreme Court held that the freedom of the press guaranteed by the first amendment to the Federal Constitution 'prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with 'actual malice'--that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.' 376 U.S. at 279--280, 84 S.Ct. at 726, 11 L.Ed.2d at 706.

Later decisions extended this requirement of proof of actual malice to suits for defamation brought by persons who were candidates for public office and to statements which might not relate to official conduct but did relate to fitness for office (St. Amant v. Thompson (1968), 390 U.S. 727, 20 L.Ed.2d 262, 88 S.Ct. 1323; Monitor Patriot Co. v. Roy (1971), 401 U.S 265, 91 S.Ct. 621, 28 L.Ed.2d 35; ,Ocala Star-Banner Co. v. Damron (1971), 401 U.S. 295, 91 S.Ct. 628, 28 L.Ed.2d 57), and to suits by persons, who although neither officials nor candidates, were in some sense 'public figures.' (Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts and Associated Press v. Walker (1967), 388 U.S. 130, 87 S.Ct. 1975, 18 L.Ed.2d 1094.) Finally, in Resenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc. (1971), 403 U.S. 29, 91 S.Ct. 1811, 29 L.Ed.2d 296, a three-man plurality of the Supreme Court took the further step of applying the New York Times standard to suits brought by private persons who were neither public officials nor public figures, so long as the defamatory statement was made in the course of a report about matters of general or public interest in which the plaintiff had become involved.

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, Curtis Publishing Co. V. Butts, and other decisions of the court also made it clear that the 'reckless disregard' variant of actual malice meant more than a failure to investigate, and required 'sufficient evidence to permit the conclusion that the defendant in fact entertained serious doubts as to the truth of his publication.' (See St. Armant v. Thompson (1968), 390 U.S. 727, 731, 88 S.Ct. 1323, 1325, 20 L.Ed.2d 262, 267.) In the course of its decisions, Moreover, the court has described the burden on the plaintiff of proving actual malice in very stringent terms, stating that proof of actual malice must be made 'with convincing clarity' (Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc. (1971), 403 U.S. 29, 55, 91 S.Ct. 1811, 29 L.Ed.2d 296, 318, a standard which seemingly is more rigorous than the usual one of a preponderance of the evidence. See Gibson v. Maloney (Fla.App.1972), 263 So.2d 632, 636, Cert. denied (1975), 410 U.S. 984, 93 S.Ct. 1505, 36 L.Ed.2d 180.

Thus matters stood when Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 94 S.Ct. 2997, 41 L.Ed.2d 789, reached the court. Elmer Gertz, the plaintiff , is an attorney who was representing in civil litigation the family of a youth who had been killed by a policeman. Subsequently, the policeman had been convicted of the murder of the youth. The defendant was the publisher of a journal in which there had appeared an article containing various false and defamatory statements about Gertz, including one that he was a 'Communist-Fronter,' and another that the prosecution of the police officer had been a 'frame-up' of which Gertz had been the architect.

Gertz filed a diversity action for libel in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The jury returned a verdict in his favor in the amount of $50,000 but the trial judge entered a judgment N.o.v. for defendant. (Gertz v. Welch (322 F.Supp. 997 (N.D.Ill.1970).) The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit did not disagree with the district court's determination that the plaintiff was not a public figure, but it concluded on the basis of Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc., that the New York Times standard was applicable, because the article in which the defamatory statements appeared concerned an issue of public interest. It therefore affirmed the judgment for the defendant. Gertz v. Welch, 471 F.2d 801 (7th Cir. 1972).

In reversing the Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court retreated from the position taken by the plurality in the Rosenbloom case. While adhering to its position that recovery of damages for defamatory publications concerning public officials and public figures would require proof of actual malice, the court held that the States were free to impose liability on some less rigorous basis where the plaintiff was a private individual and where the defamatory statement in question was such that it made a substantial danger to reputation apparent. The court expressly reserved judgment as to a situation where a State 'purported to condition civil liability on a factual misstatement whose content did not warn a reasonably prudent editor or broadcaster of its defamatory potential.' 418 U.S. at 348, 94 S.Ct. at 3011, 41 L.Ed.2d at 810.

The extent to which liability could by...