A Hoosier Hatfill Case? Defamation Verdict Alarms Newspapers

Fitz: Bio-warfare expert Steven J. Hatfill’s lawsuit alleging he had been defamed by the reporting of The New York Times and columnist Nicholas D. Kristof never made it to a jury -- but if it had, a nightmare outcome might have looked a lot like a far more obscure case out of Terre Haute that is alarming editors and publishers throughout Indiana.

Earlier this summer, a jury ordered The Tribune-Star in Terre Haute to pay a former county sheriff’s deputy $500,000 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages for defamation.

The Tribune-Star’s crime? It accurately and fairly reported in the spring of 2004 that the Clay County deputy, Jeff Maynard, was being investigated by the Indiana State Police on a complaint of misconduct while on duty.

When the investigation was concluded a few months later, the newspaper reported with the same length and prominence that Maynard had been cleared -- and that State Police were now alleging that the woman who brought the complaint made it all up. The charges against the woman were fully reported.

But none of that seemed to matter in court, where Maynard’s attorney kept the focus not on the responsible reporting of the Tribune-Star,  but the undeniable havoc the alleged fabricator made in the deputy’s life and career.

Hoosier State Press Association (HSPA) General Counsel) Stephen Key noted in the group’s newsletter that some in the jury were moved to tears by the testimony of Maynard’s former wife. Emotion carried the day, he wrote.

Tribune-Star Editor Max Jones saw it first hand at the trial. “Certainly, it was our view that not only was the Tribune-Star taken to task in a very emotional way, but so was the press in general,” he said in an interview. “On more than one occasion, the plaintiff’s attorney painted a broad brush (saying), this is the way the press does things, this is how the media does things.

“And his plea to the jury was -- you can do something about it.”

In its appeal to the judge to dismiss the verdict, the newspaper says, the jury’s focus “was fundamentally misplaced, as a matter of law.”

“The issue is not whether (the woman’s) allegations were true; rather it is whether the Tribune-Star accurately reported her allegations,” the brief states.

The $1.5 million verdict is the largest libel award ever against a media defendant in Indiana, HSPA’s Key says. The previous record was a $985,000 judgment against the Journal-Gazette in Fort Wayne that was finally overturned by the state Supreme Court in 1999 -- after 10 years of litigation, Key notes.

What’s more worrying, Key says, is that the suit should have been stopped in its tracks because of Indiana’s strong anti-SLAPP statute designed to thwart lawsuits filed to prevent the public and the press from exercising their constitutional rights to free speech and petition on issues of public interest.

“How the Tribune-Star could be faulted for reporting on allegations against a police officer that were to be investigated by the Indiana State Police is unfathomable,” Key says.

The lawsuit has energized the Tribune-Star and its Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. (CNHI) owner -- both of whom have been extremely supportive of the newsroom, Editor Jones says -- as well as newspapers from around the state.

This isn’t just a press issue, Bob Zaltsberg told readers of The Herald-Times in Bloomington, Ind., in a column last Sunday.

“Editors and free press advocates are on edge because the verdict could chill citizens from alleging misconduct against public officials, and newspapers from reporting on any such allegations or even criminal investigations,” he wrote. “It could weaken the news media’s duty to be a watchdog over people in powerful positions.”

The Tribune-Star’s Jones said he understands that a case in Terre Haute might stay below the radar of the national, or even Indiana press. “But this (case),” he added, “really has some very interesting subplots that would make editors sort of scratch their heads about what happening.”

And not just in Indiana.