State Court Throws Out Teacher’s Libel Lawsuit : Free speech: He sued a student newspaper for saying that he was a ‘babbler.’ The decision is first ruling since U.S. Supreme Court narrowed defamation defense.

A state Court of Appeal on Tuesday barred a libel suit by a teacher against a student newspaper for an article describing him as a “babbler” and the “worst teacher” in the school.

The panel ruled 3 to 0 that the statements, made by a student quoted in the article, contained no factual assertions that could be proved false and are protected by the First Amendment.

The decision was believed to be the first by a California appellate court since the U.S. Supreme Court last year narrowed a widely used defense by news organizations against defamation suits. The high court said then that statements of “opinion”--once considered broadly immune from suit--could be held libelous if they implied a provably false assertion of fact.

The appeal panel, in an opinion by Appellate Justice John T. Racanelli, concluded that the statements about the teacher were incapable of being proved true or false, or amounted to only “rhetorical hyperbole”--and remained protected under the high court ruling.

While the high court found that there was no wholesale protection for statements of opinion, it recognized that existing constitutional guarantees “remained operative to protect free expression of ideas,” Racanelli wrote.

Tuesday’s decision was welcomed by Robert D. Links of San Francisco, an attorney for one of the students in the case, as an important and precedent-setting practical application of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

“I’m glad to see the First Amendment is still alive and well, particularly in high school,” said Links. “This is a case that began with the teacher trying to teach a lesson to the students and ended with the students teaching a lesson to the teacher.”

An attorney for the teacher could not be reached for comment. It was not known whether the ruling would be appealed to the state Supreme Court.

The case arose in March, 1988, with publication of an article in In Flight, a student newspaper at Foothill High School in the Amador Valley Union High School District in Alameda County.

The story reported that a smoke bomb had gone off in the classroom of mathematics teacher Larry L. Moyer. Under a headline reading “Students Terrorize Moyer,” the article quoted one anonymous student as saying that it was a joke and another, described as “the Shadow,” calling Moyer “a babbler . . . the worst teacher at FHS.”

Moyer brought suit for defamation and emotional distress against the school district, principal, newspaper adviser and students who made and reported the statements. An Alameda County Superior Court judge refused to allow the case to go to trial and dismissed the suit. Moyer appealed, contending that the statements could be found libelous under the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Racanelli, joined by Appellate Justices William A. Newsom and William D. Stein, said that the high court decision “did not substantially change” legal principles that had protected statements that could not be reasonably interpreted as stating actual facts.

The remark about “worst teacher” was “simply an expression of anger or disgust” by the student, Racanelli said. The “babbler” statement “was not used literally but as a form of exaggerated expression conveying the student-speaker’s disapproval of (Moyer’s) teaching or speaking style,” the justice said. He said the term “terrorize” was “rhetorical hyperbole--a word used in a loose, figurative sense.”