Trotter v. Jack Anderson Enterprises, Inc.

• Decision Date: 05 June 1987
• Docket Number: No. 86-2542,86-2542
• Citation: 818 F.2d 431
• Parties: , 14 Media L. Rep. 1180 John C. TROTTER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. JACK ANDERSON ENTERPRISES, INC. and Jack Anderson, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 431

818 F.2d 431

8 Fed.R.Serv.3d 451, 14 Media L. Rep. 1180

John C. TROTTER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. JACK ANDERSON ENTERPRISES, INC. and Jack Anderson Defendants-Appellees.

No. 86-2542.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

June 5, 1987.

Keith G. Fabrizi, Trotter, Trotter & Fabrizi, Houston, Tex., James L. Branton, San Antonio, Tex., for plaintiff-appellant.

David J. Branson, Paul Getz Levenson, Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays & Handler, Washington, D.C., for defendants-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Before RUBIN, RANDALL, and JOHNSON, Circuit Judges.

ALVIN B. RUBIN, Circuit Judge:

A Texas lawyer, who was president of a Guatemalan soft drink bottling company, sues a newspaper columnist for libel, contending that he was defamed by two of the columnist's articles. The articles described anti-union violence at the bottling plant in Guatemala and identified the plant management, and the Texas lawyer in particular, as the orchestrators of the violence. The district court granted the columnist's summary judgment motion on the grounds that the lawyer was a limited-purpose public figure and the lawyer had failed to show that the columnist harbored any actual malice. Because the violence had attracted the attention of major United States newspapers, public officials in the United States, and a significant segment of the public, it was an issue of public concern, and the lawyer's role as chief policymaker for the plant made him a public figure for that issue. Since the motion for summary judgment gave ample notice that actual malice was a matter to be litigated, the lawyer cannot excuse his failure to demonstrate actual malice on the ground that the columnist conceded the issue by not filing an answer to the complaint. The lawyer also cannot rely upon the district court's instructions to defer litigation of actual malice until the public-figure question was decided when he ultimately had an opportunity to prove actual malice. For these reasons, we AFFIRM the summary judgment.

I.

John C. Trotter, a lawyer living in Houston, served as president of Embotelladora Guatemalteca, a Coca-Cola bottling company in Guatemala City. In 1979, the nationally syndicated, political columnist Jack Anderson published two articles about a prolonged and violent labor conflict at Embotelladora. The first article appeared on March 20, 1979 under the caption: COKE CONTROVERSY. In five paragraphs, it described the murder of the union's financial secretary, the unsuccessful assassination attempt of a second union official, and action by Coca-Cola shareholders for imposition of "minimum labor standards" on franchise bottlers by the parent company. The sole reference to John Trotter was a sentence characterizing him as the manager of Embotelladora.

The second article, which appeared on October 15, 1979, contained twelve paragraphs. Anderson chastised President Jimmy Carter for ignoring the labor violence at Embotelladora. The columnist suggested that the President had not extended his human-rights campaign to Embotelladora because of his close ties to Coca-Cola. The article printed excerpts from a letter by United States Representative Donald Pease urging the President to intervene. One of the excerpts stated that there was " 'an unmercifully ruthless campaign of intimidation and terror orchestrated by the plant management and its American owner, John Clinton [sic; actually, Clayton] Trotter.' " The article also quoted Pease as stating that Trotter " 'appears firmly committed to destroying the union and has demonstrated his willingness to stop at nothing toward this end.... Union officials have been assassinated and their successors have been constantly harassed with death threats.' "

Trotter initiated his libel action against Anderson in Texas state court in March 1980. Promptly after removal of the case to federal district court in May 1980, Anderson moved to dismiss. In March 1984, the motion to dismiss was granted on the ground that the material quoted from Congressman Pease's letter was privileged and therefore could not serve as the basis for a libel suit. That decision was reversed by this circuit in an unpublished opinion. On remand, Anderson filed a motion for summary judgment on the grounds that Trotter was a public figure and that Trotter had conceded he could not show actual malice. The district court granted the motion.

Trotter raises three issues on appeal. He contends that he was not a public figure, that Anderson conceded actual malice by not filing an answer to the complaint, and that his failure to prove actual malice resulted from instructions by the district court not to litigate the issue.

II.

The Supreme Court has identified two classes of public figures in addition to government officials: general-purpose and limited-purpose public figures. General-purpose public figures are those individuals who "achieve such pervasive fame or notoriety that [they] become[ ] a public figure for all purposes and in all contexts." ¹ Such persons have assumed so prominent a role in the affairs of society that they have become celebrities. ² "Absent clear evidence of general fame or notoriety in the community, and pervasive involvement in the affairs of society," ³ an individual should not be characterized as a general-purpose public figure. Anderson does not contend that Trotter has established this kind of prominence either in American, or even Houston, society at large.

Limited-purpose public figures achieve their status by " 'thrust[ing] themselves to the forefront of particular public controversies in order to influence the resolution of the issues involved,' " ⁴ or because they "voluntarily inject [themselves] or [are] drawn into a particular public controversy." ⁵ If Trotter was a public figure, his status was of this limited type.

Whether an individual is a public figure is a matter of law for the court to decide. ⁶ This difficult determination cannot be made by the mechanical application of general rules. Indeed, defining a public figure has been likened to trying to nail a jellyfish to the wall. ⁷ In an effort to give shape to what might be a formless injury into limited-purpose-public-figure status, the District of Columbia Circuit has developed a three-step test: (1) The controversy at issue must be public both in the sense that people are discussing it and people other than the immediate participants in the controversy are likely to feel the impact of its resolution; (2) the plaintiff must have more than a trivial or tangential role in the controversy; and (3) the alleged defamation must be germane to the plaintiff's participation in the controversy. ⁸ This test appears to be sensible, and we adopt it.

III.

The first question, then, is whether the labor violence at Embotelladora was a public controversy. We find that it was. Because of the proximity of other Western Hemisphere countries to the United States, social and political turmoil occurring there has aroused particular domestic concern, more so when United States companies are implicated. The involvement of ITT in Chilean politics, for example, was subject to extensive public scrutiny. In the past decade, with the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, Central American countries have become a focus of national concern.

The labor violence at Embotelladora captured the attention of a diverse and broadly-based audience, including the media, political leaders, human-rights organizations, labor unions, and Coca-Cola shareholders. United States press coverage of the events at Embotelladora began in February 1977 when the Associated Press reported a Coca-Cola shareholders' resolution that charged Embotelladora with repressive actions including influencing the military police in Guatemala to intervene violently. Inquiries about the resolution were made by the Atlanta Constitution and the Wall Street Journal. An article on Coca-Cola in the October, 1977 issue of the Business and Society Review devoted two of its four pages to the labor dispute at Embotelladora and the shareholder resolutions. The New York Times ran a front-page article on right-wing terror in Guatemala in March 1979 in which it discussed the labor violence at Embotelladora. Two months later, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlanta Journal & Constitution, and nationally syndicated columnist Milton Moskowitz reported charges of murder, bribery, and other abuses at Embotelladora that were raised by shareholders at Coca-Cola's annual meeting. In 1979, Coca-Cola also received inquiries about Embotelladora from "60 Minutes," the Atlantic Monthly, the Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Village Voice, and Los Angeles Times. ⁹ The New York Times continued its coverage with an article in June 1980 detailing the violence at Embotelladora and the broadening of the shareholders' complaints into an international protest campaign and an article in April 1985 that described the finally resolved union fight as "one of the most publicized union fights in recent Latin American history."

Trotter dismisses much of the press coverage as irrelevant because it was published after Anderson's articles. Citing Hutchinson v. Proxmire, ¹⁰ Trotter observes that Anderson cannot invoke the public-figure defense if the allegedly defamatory articles themselves turned him into a public figure. Creating a public issue, however, is not the same as revealing one. The purpose of investigative reporting is to uncover matters of public concern previously hidden from the public view. We agree with the District of Columbia Circuit that the first newspaper to report on a pre-existing public dispute should not be held to a stricter standard of liability than those who follow. ¹¹ To hold otherwise would undermine the purpose of the public-figure doctrine--encouraging debate on issues of public concern. Anderson's articles did not cause the later press coverage of the...