The Nation - News from Aug. 4, 1985

A federal appeals court in Atlanta affirmed a jury’s decision that Nobel Prize-winning physicist William Shockley was libeled by an Atlanta newspaper. But a three-judge panel of the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the $1 verdict against Cox Enterprises Inc., which owns the Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution. Shockley contended that an article written by former Constitution reporter Roger Witherspoon, which discussed Shockley’s theory that blacks as a group are inferior to whites, libeled him. He sued Cox Enterprises and Witherspoon for $1.25 million. Shockley had appealed to the 11th Circuit because he was unhappy with the $1 award.