The 10th Circuit has affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit against John Grisham and others for the book, The Innocent Man. The book details the wrongful conviction of Williamson and Fritz for the rape and murder of Debra Sue Carter. Both men were later exonerated after spending over a decade in jail.
(Ok, this isn't an insurance case, but I found it interesting)
The plaintiffs were Oklahoma District Attorney William Peterson; former Shawnee police officer Gary Rogers; and former Oklahoma state criminologist Melvin Hett each of whom played a role in the investigation or prosecution and conviction of Williamson and Fritz. The book did not portray these folks in a positive light, so they sued Grisham and others, claiming defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and false light invasion of privacy. The district court dismissed the suit for failure to state a claim and the Tenth Circuit affirmed, finding that since the plaintiffs were public officials, any statements critical of them were privileged, so long as there was no accusation of criminal activity.
Because no special damages were claimed, the plaintiffs had to allege libel per se; but 12 OS § 1443.1 applied because the plaintiffs were public officers and states that “[a]ny and all criticisms upon the official acts of any and all public officers” are privileged and cannot be considered libelous, unless a defendant makes a false allegation that the official engaged in criminal behavior. To fall into this category, “the words alleged to have been spoken of the plaintiff, when taken in their plainest and most natural sense, and as they would be ordinarily understood, [must] obviously import the commission of crime punishable by indictment.”
The court states:
Plaintiffs point to no statement in which defendants directly accuse any plaintiff of a crime.
Plaintiffs expect us to scale a mountain of inferences in order to reach the conclusion that defendants’ statements impute criminal acts to plaintiffs and render the statutory privilege of § 1443.1 inapplicable. We decline to engage in such inferential analysis, or to take a myriad of other analytical leaps plaintiffs ask us to make. Any connection between defendants’ statements and an accusation of criminal activity is far too tenuous for us to declare them as unprivileged for purposes of § 1443.1.
Since the statements were privileged for defamation purposes, the court found them privileged for claims of intentional infliction of emotional distress and for false light invasion of privacy.
See, Peterson v. Grisham
