$4.6-Million Libel Judgment Against S.F. Paper Voided

In a major victory for news organizations, the state Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a $4.6-million libel judgment won by a prosecutor and two police inspectors in a suit against the San Francisco Examiner.

The justices unanimously overturned what had been the largest libel verdict ever upheld by a state appeal court in California.

The high court found in its own review of the evidence that the plaintiffs had not shown with “convincing clarity” that the newspaper and two reporters acted with “actual malice” in publishing articles alleging that the law enforcement officials had acted improperly in obtaining the conviction of the defendant in a Chinatown murder case.

Under a landmark 1964 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, public officials, in proving “actual malice,” must show that the defendants knowingly published a falsehood or acted with “reckless disregard” for the truth.

Widely Watched

The case had been widely watched by news organizations and civil libertarians who warned that allowing the verdict to stand would discourage efforts by the press to uncover improper acts by public officials.

In strong language, the justices affirmed their own duty as set out in a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court ruling to make an independent review of the evidence in libel judgments against the press. They also emphasized the importance of assuring that libel actions do not infringe on the role of the press as a check on governmental misconduct and secrecy.

“Public officials must sometimes bear scathing and even false attacks subject to those narrowly circumscribed exceptions embodied in the concept of actual malice,” Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird wrote for the court.

“The public’s interest in reports of official misconduct, even if they are factually erroneous and damaging, outweighs the reputational interest of any individual.”

The ruling drew a mixed reception from attorneys in the case.

Walter R. Allan, a lawyer representing the Hearst Corp. and the Examiner, said the justices had “emphatically and dramatically done what the U.S. Supreme Court said they should do: make their own careful review of the evidence. . . . We’re very pleased.”

Margaret Crosby of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, whose attorneys represented the two reporters who were defendants in the case, said:

“This is a great victory for freedom of the press. This ruling says that we as a society have an interest in learning of potential misconduct. . . . Even if the reporters can’t themselves prove it, we should hear about it.”

Charles O. Morgan Jr., attorney for the plaintiffs, expressed disappointment with the ruling and said the decision will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“In her desire to knock out the verdict, the chief justice was wrong in her statement of the law under U.S. Supreme Court rulings,” he said.

Signed Opinion

Bird’s opinion was signed by Justices Allen E. Broussard and Cruz Reynoso, along with state Appellate Justices Eugene McClosky and Earl Johnson Jr., of Los Angeles, sitting temporarily by appointment.

Justices Stanley Mosk and Malcolm M. Lucas agreed in the judgment of the court but did not sign Bird’s opinion.

The case before the court emerged from a three-part series of articles published by the Examiner in 1976 asserting that San Francisco law enforcement officials had acted improperly in obtaining what the newspaper said was the wrongful conviction of Richard Lee for the murder of a rival gang member in Chinatown in 1972.

The stories, written by Examiner reporter Raul Ramirez and free-lance writer Lowell Bergman, centered on contentions to the newspaper by the state’s key witness, Thomas Porter, who had testified that Lee had confessed to the crime.

Procured by Threats

The Examiner reported that Porter had declared that his testimony was false and that his statements against Lee at the trial had been procured by threats, coercion and promises of leniency by the officers.

Later, under questioning by investigators from the state attorney general’s office, Porter changed his story again, saying his testimony against Lee had been accurate.

The libel suit was brought by San Francisco Deputy Dist. Atty. Pierre Merle and Inspectors Frank McCoy and Edward Erdelatz Jr. of the San Francisco Police Department.

The plaintiffs alleged that the reporters knew Porter’s statements to them were false and that the newsmen also failed to pursue an investigation that would have further shown the statements were false and that Lee was guilty.

A jury returned a verdict against the paper and the reporters, awarding the plaintiffs $3 million in compensatory damages and $1.56 million in punitive damages.

In 1985, the state Court of Appeal in San Francisco upheld the verdict, calling the case a “textbook example” of libel.

Evaluated Evidence

The state Supreme Court, in a detailed 66-page opinion, said its evaluation of the evidence showed that there was a lack of “clear and convincing proof” that the defendants in the case deliberately falsified the stories or published them recklessly.

The court said that, in their own minds, the reporters had reason to believe that Porter’s statements to them were true. It noted that Porter’s charges that he had been coerced and improperly induced to testify against Lee “are not inherently improbable.”

Bird pointed out further that the prosecutor and the two officers themselves had relied on Porter’s word three times during the long history of the case--once to convict Lee, another in response to Lee’s own unsuccessful court effort to win his release and a third time in their subsequent effort to win a multimillion-dollar libel judgment.

The justices held also that the jury in the case should have been instructed by the judge that in order to render punitive damages in newspaper libel cases, jurors must find that the defendants possessed “hatred or ill will” toward the plaintiff.