McClatchy Papers Win Appeal to End Libel Suit by Attorney

An appellate court Tuesday ordered a lower court to issue a summary judgment in favor of McClatchy Newspapers to end a libel suit an attorney filed over an article in the Fresno Bee.

Paul Mosesian sought $21 million in damages after he was mentioned in a May 31, 1982, article alleging that 24 people were members of “the Fresno mob.” The article was based on a pretrial deposition by McClatchy Newspapers reporter Denny Walsh in another lawsuit and on documents filed as exhibits with the deposition.

Mosesian’s action called the reference to him false and libelous and said it caused him a “loss of his reputation, shame, mortification and hurt feelings.” Named as defendants besides McClatchy and the Bee were reporters Jeanie Borba and Royal Calkins.

Mosesian argued that running an article on Walsh’s testimony involved a conspiracy to introduce defamatory material into judicial proceedings, which he contended should negate the immunity the press obtains from a section of the California Civil Code that makes a publication or broadcast exempt from libel if it stems from a legislative or judicial proceeding or “in any other official proceeding authorized by law.”

McClatchy Newspapers, publisher of the Sacramento Bee and the Fresno Bee, argued for summary judgment on grounds that the California Civil Code grants the media an absolute privilege to report testimony and other evidence in a libel action, even if that testimony was elicited and the evidence produced pursuant to a conspiracy to invoke immunity. McClatchy lost in the Superior Court but then appealed.

In ruling for McClatchy, the state’s 5th District Court of Appeal said the U.S. Supreme Court has concluded that “underlying the privilege is the vital public policy of affording free access to the courts and facilitating the crucial functions of the finder of fact.”

The appellate justices ruled that because of that opinion, they “must adhere to the policy.”

“The fears of chilled speech and hindered justice are too much a part of our case law to be disregarded as unproved,” the opinion says.

The justices also noted that allegations of conspiracy “do not pierce the protective shield embodied in the statute.”

The opinion was written by Justice Charles Hamlin. Presiding Justice George A. Brown and Justice Wickson Woolpert concurred.