A three-judge district court agreed with the challengers that the map likely violated Section 2 of the VRA, granting a preliminary injunction that ordered the state to draw a new map. c.Was the column's gist substantially true? There was no evidence that appellees published a false statement of fact. Did you know that almost twice as many people die each year from suicide as from homicide? Appellees negated actual malice, defeating the Tatums' libel claims entirely if they are limited-purpose public figures and defeating their exemplary damage claims if they are private figures. Dallas Morning News Leading daily newspaper serving the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Based on their view of the column's gist, appellees next argue that the cause of Paul's suicide and the Tatums' belief about that cause are irrelevant to the issue of truth. The court then vacated its judgment and stayed the case pending the resolution of a defamation case then pending in the Texas Supreme Court. See Civ. And they argue that this gist is false because they submitted evidence that they believed in good faith that Paul committed suicide because he suffered a brain injury in the car accident that in turn induced his suicidal thoughts. Id. of Tex., Inc., 434 S.W.3d at 15657. Based on that evidence, the court concluded that a factfinder could find that the false gistthat Neely was disciplined for operating while using drugswas more damaging to Neely's reputation than the truththat Neely was disciplined for self-prescribing medications. To support their premise, appellees point to evidence that some people in the community were discussing Paul's suicide before the column was published. denied) (mem.op.) Additionally, the summary judgment evidence established that the Tatums were out of town the day the column was published. See Civ. Civ. We affirm the judgment to the extent it orders the Tatums to take nothing on their DTPA claims. We recently cited Lipsky and placed the burden of proving falsity on the plaintiff in a libel case involving the Texas Citizens Participation Act, Civ. Yet we're nearly blind to the greater threat of self-inflicted violence. Criminal Law The trial court granted appellees' amended summary judgment motion, and the Tatums timely filed a notice of appeal. We are not persuaded. Because we see no matching argument in appellees' amended motion for summary judgment, that argument is not properly before us. Employment Law 73.005(a) (truth is a defense to a libel action); see also Neely, 418 S.W.3d at 62 (mentioning the defense of truth and citing 73.005); Randall's Food Mkts., Inc. v. Johnson, 891 S.W.2d 640, 646 (Tex.1995) (In suits brought by private individuals, truth is an affirmative defense to slander.) (footnote omitted). Milkovich lost on summary judgment and appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. That question remains to be decided by the factfinder. I'm troubled that we, as a society, allow suicide to remain cloaked in such secrecy, if not outright deception. 700 the dvd+ dvd+ monkey monkey the yellow yellow Alabama asked the U.S. Supreme Court to freeze the district court's injunction, which the Court did by a 5-4 decision pending a merits decision. We reject the Tatums' second appellate issue. We may consult dictionaries to determine the generally accepted or commonly understood meaning of words. at 62 ([S]tatements that are not verifiable as false cannot form the basis of a defamation claim.); see also Bentley v. Bunton, 94 S.W.3d 561, 57985 (Tex.2002) (accusations that a judge was corrupt were sufficiently verifiable to constitute actionable statements of fact). In two appellate issues, the Tatums urge that the trial court erred in granting the summary judgment dismissing their libel and DTPA claims. Haynes is distinguishable. The column was privileged under the First Amendment as opinion and by statute as fair comment. He was an excellent and popular student, an outstanding athlete, and had no history of mental illness. She has since written a book, Struck by Living. The Dallas Express a newspaper printed by and for the city's African American community ALSO essential sadly, only the years 1919-1924 have been scanned, here The Jewish Monitor published in Fort Worth, serving the DFW (and Texas) Jewish community, 1919-1921, here The Texas Jewish Post, 1950-2011, here More recently, a paid obituary in this newspaper reported that a popular local high school student died as a result of injuries sustained in an automobile accident.. 2014, pet. Grief Support. 3 On June 20, 2010Father's Day, and about one month after Paul's suicidethe paper published a column by Blow entitled "Shrouding Suicide Leaves its Danger Unaddressed." 4 There was no evidence the complained of act was a producing cause of the Tatums' damages. Steve Blow is a columnist for The Dallas Morning News. Finally, the Tatums point to their minister's testimony that he called Blow to express his concerns about the column and that Blow's first response was, Did I get my facts right?. Legal Ethics Civ. Apply Here SUCV201001010, 2013 WL 4081413, at *912 (Mass.Super.Ct. Because the evidence raises a genuine fact issue that the column's gist was neither true nor substantially true, appellees' traditional and no-evidence summary judgment grounds addressing truth and substantial truth cannot support the trial court's judgment. Civ. Family Law Paul's friend went in the house and found Paul dazed, confused, irrational, incoherent, and apparently in physical anguish and holding one of the family's firearms. Paul's friend left him alone to tell her mother the situation, and as she left she heard a gunshot. ", "We are sorry for the Tatum family's tragic loss of their son," said Mike Wilson, editor of The News. Health Law The column describes Paul's obituary and death immediately after it describes the fabricated cause of death that was advanced after Ted Pillsbury's suicide. Newspapers, Inc. v. Matthews, 339 S.W.2d 890, 893 (Tex.1960). 73.002(b)(2). That decision, which backed the Tatums defamation claims, said readers could construe the column to suggest that Paul suffered from mental illness.. We agree with the Tatums' second argument and thus do not address their first. For the reasons discussed below, we conclude that their cases are distinguishable or otherwise unpersuasive. 203 0 obj <>/Filter/FlateDecode/ID[<5137B43803F1ED67129ECA0B47F79974>]/Index[186 34]/Info 185 0 R/Length 86/Prev 175724/Root 187 0 R/Size 220/Type/XRef/W[1 2 1]>>stream Neely's substantial truth analysis is instructive. The summary judgment evidence conflicts on certain points regarding the newspaper's investigation into Paul's death and the manner in which Blow learned about the immediate cause of Paul's death. 4. These cases are distinguishable because the case before us does not turn on the verifiability of the column's statement about the cause of Paul's suicide. Obituaries Section. Newspapers, Inc. v. Hepps, 475 U.S. 767 (1986). Appellees won a take-nothing summary judgment. Nonetheless, the Tatums filed affidavits by two experts. All rights reserved. Oddly, it was considered an embarrassing way to die. at 1019. This case involves libel, which is a defamation expressed in written or other graphic form. A statement is defamatory if it tends to (i) injure a person's reputation, (ii) expose him to public hatred, contempt, ridicule, or financial injury, or (iii) impeach his honesty, integrity, or virtue. Did the Tatums raise a genuine fact issue that DMN violated 17.46(b)(24)? Thus, Blow had a motive not to learn if there was any explanation for the way the Tatums chose to write the obituary other than the supposed desire to deceive the obituary's readers. More than 1,000 people attended Paul's funeral. ERISA 7. Think of how much more attention we pay to the latter. WFAATV, Inc.,978 S.W.2d at 572. Accordingly, because there is no evidence of a public controversy that could make the Tatums limited-purpose public figures, we conclude that the Tatums are private figures for purposes of this summary judgment appeal. But in late 2015, the 5th District Court of Appeals ruled that the lawsuit could go forward. Add . The Tatum filed suit alleging libel and libel per se against Petitioners alleging that the column at issue defamed them. Public figure status is a question of law for the court. Heritage Capital, 436 S.W.3d at 875. The Dallas Morning News Homepage. After West's election, Thomson ran columns asserting that before the election West had opposed a proposal that the town should purchase a municipal power system, but that he changed his position after he was elected. Appellants John and Mary Ann Tatum sued appellees Steve Blow and The Dallas Morning News (DMN) for libel regarding a column that Blow wrote and DMN published one month after the Tatums' son Paul committed suicide. We review the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmovant, crediting evidence favorable to that party if reasonable jurors could and disregarding contrary evidence unless reasonable jurors could not. Their traditional grounds were: The column was not of and concerning the Tatums. I think it's part of our survival mechanism. That night, Paul was involved in a one-car automobile accident. We next consider appellees' summary judgment ground that the column contains only nonactionable opinions. court opinions. Prac. Entertainment & Sports Law The Tatums timely filed a second notice of appeal. Am. Appellees also argue on appeal that any libel per quod claim fails because the Tatums did not plead or prove special damages. We construe an allegedly defamatory publication as a whole, in light of the surrounding circumstances, based on how a person of ordinary intelligence would perceive it. On that occasion, he said, he attempted to contact the author of one of the obituaries. [1] The Dallas woman first went public with her story of depression and suicide attempts in my column three years ago. Smith v. Deneve, 285 S.W.3d 904, 909 (Tex.App.Dallas 2009, no pet.). Supreme Court of Texas. We are not necessarily convinced that Knopf's first statement about Haynes was an unverifiable opinion. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the Tatums, we conclude that a reasonable person could find that people who knew the Tatums would reasonably understand that the column referred to the Tatums. 16-0098 THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, INC. AND STEVE BLOW, PETITIONERS v. JOHN TATUM AND MARY ANN TATUM, RESPONDENTS ON PETITION FOR REVIEW FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH DISTRICT OF TEXAS Argued January 10, 2018 JUSTICE BROWN delivered the unanimous opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, Our supreme court, however, has embraced the Milkovich verifiability test. filed), we noted that "[p]lacing the burden of proving truth or falsity is a complex . Is there evidence that the column's gist was false? 2015 WL 5156908, at *6 n.6. The Court issued an opinion resolving the case on May 11, 2018. V. THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, INC. AND STEVE BLOW, Appellees . Based on his investigation, he concluded that the primary impact involved in the accident was moderate to severe, and that the accident was severe enough that it would have subjected a human occupant of the vehicle to, at a very minimum, the risk of a mild TBI [traumatic brain injury], such as a concussion.. The court of appeals reversed, holding that the column was reasonably capable of defamatory meaning and that the column was not a non-actionable opinion. See DuncanHubert v. Mitchell, 310 S.W.3d 92, 103 (Tex.App.Dallas 2010, pet. If, as concerns the present case, the plaintiff is a private individual rather than a public official or public figure, the elements of defamation are: (1) the defendant published a statement, (2) the statement was defamatory concerning the plaintiff, and (3) the defendant acted with negligence regarding the statement's truth.2 Neely, 418 S.W.3d at 61; WFAATV, Inc. v. McLemore, 978 S.W.2d 568, 571 (Tex.1998). Reckless disregard means that the publisher entertained serious doubts about the publication's truth or had a high degree of awareness of the publication's probable falsity. Appellees also assert that the obituary's omission of Paul's suicide shows that it was in fact a deception. But as discussed above, deception implies intent to deceive, and the Tatums raised a genuine fact issue as to whether they had such an intent. To the extent West is similar to the instant case, we disagree with it. %%EOF On Petition for Review from the Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas. Although there is evidence that people in Paul's high school community were discussing his death generally, and that unspecified others in north Dallas were also discussing it before the column was published, there is no evidence that the cause or manner of Paul's death affected anyone other than the Tatums. The trial court granted Defendant's motion to dismiss Plaintiffs' action under the Texas Citizens Participation Act. The Tatums sued Julie Hersh in a separate lawsuit. Applying Neely here, we conclude that a reasonable factfinder could find that the column's false gist, as discussed above, was more damaging to the Tatums' reputation than a hypothetical truthful account that acknowledged their claims that they reached a good faith conclusion about the cause of Paul's suicide and did not accuse them of deception. Id. You're all set! In adopting the verifiable as false test in Bentley and Neely, the Texas Supreme Court relied on the United States Supreme Court's decision in Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1 (1990). IN THE SUPREME COURT OF TEXAS No. Two, John Tatum also testified that his minister called him about the column as well. West successfully ran for mayor of a Utah town. Ironically, the first person I knew to die of AIDS was said to have cancer. The Tatums argue that an accusation of deception is verifiable and therefore actionable, while appellees argue that it is not. 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