Supreme Court to Decide $4.56-Million Libel Case

The state Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to decide the San Francisco Examiner’s appeal of a $4.56-million libel verdict stemming from a 1976 series of articles alleging that a Chinatown man was wrongly convicted of murder.

The case has been drawing wide attention from media attorneys, who believe that if the hefty damages are allowed to stand, investigative reporting on public affairs will be chilled. The $4.56-million verdict is believed to be the largest ever in a California libel case.

The case stems from a three-part series of articles in 1976 alleging that San Francisco law enforcement officials mistakenly won a conviction against a Chinatown youth, Richard Lee, in a 1972 murder of a rival gang member. The articles alleged that the officials believed they needed a conviction to restore public confidence in their ability to control Chinatown crime.

The stories were based in part on a statement by one of the key witnesses against Lee, who told the Examiner that law enforcement officers coerced him into testifying that Lee had confessed to the crime.

However, when state attorney general’s investigators later questioned the witness, Thomas H. Porter, he changed his story again, this time maintaining that the damaging testimony about Lee’s confession was accurate.

The libel suit was brought by the deputy district attorney who prosecuted Lee and two homicide detectives who investigated the 1972 murder. The officials alleged that the reporters knew Porter’s statement to them was false.

In a lengthy opinion issued last October, the state Court of Appeal upheld the $4.56-million verdict, calling the case a “textbook” example of libel. The jury verdict included $3 million in compensatory damages and $1.56 million in punitive damages, including a total of $700,000 to be paid by Lowell Bergman, then a free-lance reporter who worked on the story, and then-Examiner reporter Raul Ramirez, who wrote it. Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and Justices Allen Broussard, Stanley Mosk, Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin voted to hear the case. Justice Malcolm M. Lucas did not vote to hear the case and Edward A. Panelli did not participate.