The Tatums wrote an obituary for Paul and paid DMN to publish the obituary in the Dallas Morning News newspaper. Accordingly, neither a traditional nor a no-evidence summary judgment could properly be granted against the Tatums on the theory that the column was not about them. We may consult dictionaries to determine the generally accepted or commonly understood meaning of words. For example, the internal sources that Blow said he contacted before publishing the column denied having discussed the matter with him. In that case, Milkovich sued Lorain for publishing an article that essentially accused him of perjury. See id. In this libel-by-implication case, a column written by Steve Blow and published by The Dallas Morning News (collectively, Petitioners) was reasonably capable of meaning that John and Mary Ann Tatum acted deceptively and that the accusation of deception was reasonably capable of defaming the Tatums. The Tatums purchased a space in the Dallas Morning News to publish an obituary for their son. More specifically, the column's first four paragraphs state Blow's opinion that people generally consider a death by suicide worthy of deception and mention honesty and being open about other causes of death. 6. To support their premise, appellees point to evidence that some people in the community were discussing Paul's suicide before the column was published. Gaming Law at 62 (In this defamation suit involving two physicians, we clarify a longstanding distinction between defamation and defamation per se). Finally, the Tatums point to their minister's testimony that he called Blow to express his concerns about the column and that Blow's first response was, Did I get my facts right?. This case involves libel, which is a defamation expressed in written or other graphic form. We reverse the trial court's summary judgment to the extent it orders the Tatums to take nothing on their libel and libel per se claims. The gist is that they stated a false cause of death, shrouded Paul's suicide in secrecy, intended to mislead and deceive the readers, and may have wanted to conceal Paul's mental illness and their own failure to intervene. But in late 2015, the 5th District Court of Appeals ruled that the lawsuit could go forward. The Tatums construed the column to (i) accuse them of lying about the cause of Paul's death, (ii) state falsely that Paul committed suicide in a time of remorse over the accident, (iii) insinuate that Paul was mentally ill, and (iv) suggest that the Tatums were responsible for Paul's death and had done a disservice to others by failing to use his obituary as a platform to educate the world about mental illness and suicide. Apply Here b. We sustain the Tatums' first issue. of Tex., Inc., 434 S.W.3d at 15657. The Court issued an opinion resolving the case on May 11, 2018. He was an excellent and popular student, an outstanding athlete, and had no history of mental illness. We affirm the judgment to the extent it orders the Tatums to take nothing on their DTPA claims. Prac. John Tatum and Mary Ann Tatum, Appellants v. The Dallas Morning News, Inc. and Steve Blow, Appellees. In two appellate issues, the Tatums urge that the trial court erred in granting the summary judgment dismissing their libel and DTPA claims. A statement does not have to refer to the plaintiff by name, however, if people who know and are acquainted with the plaintiff reasonably understand from reading the statement that it referred to the plaintiff. Main, 348 S.W.3d at 395; see also Houseman v. Publicaciones Paso del Norte, S.A., 242 S.W.3d 518, 525 (Tex.App.El Paso 2007, no pet.) We do not consider the defamatory statement itself in determining whether the plaintiff is a public figure. This opinion should not be construed to hold that the column necessarily defamed the Tatums. 16-0098 Supreme Court of Texas May 11, 2018. I think it's part of our survival mechanism. Placing the burden of proving truth or falsity is a complex matter. Commercial Record Daily Business newspaper published in Dallas, Texas. Transportation Law Courthouse News brings us this lawsuit filed two days ago in Dallas County District Court: John Tatum and Mary Ann Tatum v. The Dallas Morning News, inc. and Steve Blow. In our view, this fact does not relate to the DMN's obituary services themselves, and thus it does not constitute information concerning those services, as is required by 17.46(b)(24). Subscribe https://t.co/MqPw2ZUctn The next question is whether the false gist of the column is nevertheless substantially true. The column's headline and opening sentence announce that deception and secrecy are the column's topics. The column's headline was Shrouding suicide leaves its danger unaddressed. (Emphasis added). Again, a statement is defamatory if it tends to (i) injure the subject's reputation, (ii) expose him to public hatred, contempt, ridicule, or financial injury, or (iii) impeach his honesty, integrity, or virtue. Here, the gist of Blows column is that bereaved families often do society a disservice by failing to explicitly mention when suicide is the cause of death, according to the opinion. Conversely, a publication that consists of statements that are literally true when read in isolation can still convey a false and defamatory meaning by omitting or juxtaposing facts. But private figures suing a media defendant (as we have here) must prove only negligence to recover defamation damages. Did the Tatums raise a genuine fact issue that DMN violated 17.46(b)(24)? There was no evidence DMN committed a false, misleading, or deceptive act listed in 17.46(b), or that the Tatums relied on any complained of act. We are unpersuaded. The Dallas Morning News is an independent paper positioned for growth. The Tatums' first appellate issue argues that the trial court erred by granting summary judgment on their libel claims. Id. The Tatums submitted evidence showing that: One, their motive in stating that Paul died as a result of injuries sustained in an automobile accident was to express their belief, after investigation, that the best explanation of the underlying cause of Paul's suicide was a brain injury sustained in the auto accident. Antitrust & Trade Regulation Sysco Food Servs., Inc. v. Trapnell, 890 S.W.2d 796, 800 (Tex.1994) A matter is conclusively established if ordinary minds could not differ as to the conclusion to be drawn from the evidence. In re Estate of Hendler, 316 S.W.3d 703, 707 (Tex.App.Dallas 2010, no pet.). 13, 2015, pet. Rather, the Tatums contend that DMN should have disclosed that its columnist, Blow, had previously written columns critical of obituaries that had appeared in the newspaper. 2015 WL 5156908, at *6 n.6. TermsPrivacyDisclaimerCookiesDo Not Sell My Information, Begin typing to search, use arrow keys to navigate, use enter to select, Stay up-to-date with FindLaw's newsletter for legal professionals. Prac. Although the West court acknowledged and purported to apply the Milkovich analysis, it disregarded Milkovich's conclusions that accusing a person of being a liar or committing perjury can be sufficiently verifiable to constitute an actionable statement of fact rather than a nonactionable opinion. We long ago stated that it is the settled law of Texas, that a false statement of fact concerning a public officer, even if made in a discussion of matters of public concern, is not privileged as fair comment.. We're nearly obsessed with crime. Public Benefits At issue is. We conclude that there was more than a scintilla of evidence showing more than a mere failure to conduct a reasonable investigation. Appellees filed a traditional and no-evidence summary judgment motion. 16-0098 THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, INC. AND STEVE BLOW, PETITIONERS v. JOHN TATUM AND MARY ANN TATUM, RESPONDENTS ON PETITION FOR REVIEW FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH DISTRICT OF TEXAS Argued January 10, 2018 JUSTICE BROWN delivered the unanimous opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, 73.002(b)(2). Phila. ERISA If a defamatory statement about a private figure involves a matter of public concern, however, and the defendant is a media defendant, the private figure plaintiff must prove actual malice to recover punitive damages. The actual column, however, can be read to allow and encourage the reader to conclude that the Tatums had no basis for attributing Paul's death to injuries sustained in the earlier car crash and that they wanted to deceive the obituary's readers about the cause of Paul's death, perhaps to conceal their own failure to save his life through an intervention. Are the column's statements about the Tatums nonactionable opinions? Rather, this case turns on the verifiability of the column's accusation of deception against the Tatums. The above parts alone could cause a person of ordinary intelligence to read the column as accusing the Tatums of deceit by writing an obituary that stated a false cause of Paul's death and concealed the true cause of his death (for their own self-benefit and to the detriment of society as a whole). Additionally, the summary judgment evidence established that the Tatums were out of town the day the column was published. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the columns accusation of deception was reasonably capable of injuring the Tatums standing in the community but that Blows implicit statement that the Tatum acted deceptively was an opinion and thus not actionable. Issue One: Did the trial court err by dismissing the Tatums' libel claims? Thus, Blow had a motive not to learn if there was any explanation for the way the Tatums chose to write the obituary other than the supposed desire to deceive the obituary's readers. Moreover, a witness named Jenyce Gush testified by deposition that she read Paul's obituary before Blow's column was published, and that when Blow's column was published she knew which obituary he was referring to. On that occasion, he said, he attempted to contact the author of one of the obituaries. Finally, appellees cite West v. Thomson Newspapers, 872 P.2d 999 (Utah 1994). P. 166a(i). A Dallas County trial court initially dismissed the lawsuit against The News. Appellees argue that a public controversy existed over the official cause of Paul's death. 219 0 obj <>stream The evidence also included emails by Blow in which he said things like this: Please understand that the vast, vast majority of my readers had no inkling to the identity of the family. Alabama asked the U.S. Supreme Court to freeze the district court's injunction, which the Court did by a 5-4 decision pending a merits decision. walkers gluten free shortbread / April 12, 2022 . News | Dallas Morning News 7848 News In this Section: Public Safety Weather Politics Crime Transportation Man accused of stealing earthquake donations from Flower Mound mosque arrested. 2. Based on the above, we conclude that the expert affidavits are not speculative and the trial court did not err by overruling appellees' objections. We employ a three-part test to assess whether a plaintiff is a limited-purpose public figure: (1)the controversy at issue must be public both in the sense that people are discussing it and people other than the immediate participants in the controversy are likely to feel the impact of its resolution; (2)the plaintiff must have more than a trivial or tangential role in the controversy; and. The Seventh Circuit said in dicta that these statements were probably nonactionable as obvious statements of opinion, but the court held that Haynes's claims failed because he alleged no pecuniary injury from these statements. Health Care Law DMN did not commit a deceptive act in connection with a consumer transaction or that was a producing cause of any damages to the Tatums. See id. The Dallas Morning News Homepage. FindLaw.com Free, trusted legal information for consumers and legal professionals, SuperLawyers.com Directory of U.S. attorneys with the exclusive Super Lawyers rating, Abogado.com The #1 Spanish-language legal website for consumers, LawInfo.com Nationwide attorney directory and legal consumer resources. My column told them nothing they didn't already know. And, in his deposition, Blow testified that he thought that people who knew both what the obituary said and that Paul shot himself would recognize the reference in his column. We held that these affidavits provided clear and specific evidence that the post was about Misko, even though Misko was not named in it. The Dallas Express a newspaper printed by and for the city's African American community ALSO essential sadly, only the years 1919-1924 have been scanned, here The Jewish Monitor published in Fort Worth, serving the DFW (and Texas) Jewish community, 1919-1921, here The Texas Jewish Post, 1950-2011, here In this libel-by-implication case, a column written by Steve Blow and published by The Dallas Morning News (collectively, Petitioners) was reasonably capable of meaning that John and Mary Ann Tatum acted deceptively and that the accusation of deception was reasonably capable of defaming the Tatums. As to whether Blow misrepresented his investigation and the sources of his information, Blow testified by deposition that he learned the information about Paul's death that he used in his column from one of his colleagues at DMN. We draw this factual recitation from the allegations in the Tatums' live petition: The Tatums were Paul Tatum's parents. Real Estate & Property Law The next seven paragraphs describe two recent occurrences meant to illustrate Blow's pointthe events surrounding the deaths of Ted Pillsbury and Paul Tatum. Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1, 16, 1920 & n.6 (1990); Phila. Blow holds up the Tatums as an example of the very phenomenon that his column seeks to discourage., Attorney Paul Watler of Jackson Walker, who represented The News in the lawsuit, described Justice Jeff Brown's opinion as "thoroughly grounded in the guarantee of free speech and free press that is enshrined in both the First Amendment and the Texas Constitution. Although the Tatums' mental states when they wrote the obituary may not be susceptible of direct proof, we conclude that they are sufficiently verifiable through circumstantial evidence, such as the investigation into the possible causes for Paul's suicide that the Tatums undertook, to make the column's defamatory gist about them verifiable under Milkovich and Neely. Turner, 38 S.W.3d at 115. "With its unanimous ruling, the court affirmed that Steve Blow's piece was clearly an opinion column protected by law.". The Tatums' response relied on the following evidence: One, John Tatum testified by affidavit that his friend Lee Simpson called to inform him about the column the day it was published. As the Tatums urge, the service they bought was Paul's obituary. All rights reserved. The account about Pillsbury states that his company fabricated reports that Pillsbury had suffered a heart attack when actually he had shot himself to death. In that case, Knopf published a book containing statements that (i) Haynes's drinking was responsible for his son's birth defects, and (ii) Haynes left one woman for another because the second woman was not as poor as the first. Immigration Law Calling someone a liar and accusing someone of perjury, as occurred in those cases, both implicate the person's mental state, because both liar and perjury denote the willful telling of an untruth. Prac. See Deception, Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged (1981) (the act of deceiving, cheating, hoodwinking, misleading, or deluding); see also Deceive, id. Before Justices Lang, Fillmore, and Whitehill Opinion by Justice Whitehill New York Times v. Sullivan-Alabama city commissioner sued NY Times -said an ad they published describing mistreatment of African American students had defamed him by implication-some of the statements in the ad were false or exaggerated, but those were small details But recent Texas defamation cases may suggest that the plaintiff always has the burden of proving falsity. To the contrary, the column's tone is generally sober, and it purports to be grounded in factual details such as the circumstances of Pillsbury's and Paul's deaths, data about the prevalence of suicide among young people, and Julie Hersh's public efforts to reduce the shame and stigma surrounding mental illness. Oddly, it was considered an embarrassing way to die. See id. The Tatums sued both appellees for libel and libel per se. Whether a statement is a statement of fact or opinion is a question of law. In that regard, the statement must point to the plaintiff and to no one else. That question remains to be decided by the factfinder. hb```f``ra`a``b`@ r`@([E,X42+r3gpxp~bgecfag^l|%Y>6ZQSkGX{3`e.eVdXVPx\f;nx2_WaL) CpUR L@E QF 8+PH\~9 SY/01.dep|CG}jn@ Lkc |F | Supreme Court of Texas. We conclude that summary judgment was proper as to the Tatums' DTPA claims but not as to their libel claims. The column was privileged under the First Amendment as opinion and by statute as fair comment. And those who did know were already aware of the confusion caused by the obituary. We have already concluded that a reasonable reader could conclude that the column presents a false gist about the Tatums. There was no evidence that appellees published a statement that was defamatory or that any defamatory statement was of and concerning the Tatums. C.Procedural History and Appellate Issues. 7. A reasonable juror could conclude that Blow was not honest when he testified about the sources of his information about Paul's death. Paul's friend went in the house and found Paul dazed, confused, irrational, incoherent, and apparently in physical anguish and holding one of the family's firearms. Paul's friend left him alone to tell her mother the situation, and as she left she heard a gunshot. You can explore additional available newsletters here. But a topic is not a public controversy merely because some people are talking about it: A general concern or interest will not suffice. Professional Malpractice & Ethics Newspapers don't write about suicides unless they involve a public figure or happen in a very public way. at *1314. at 6364. The truth of the column's gist hinges on whether the Tatums intended to deceive when they wrote the obituary, not necessarily on the strength of the scientific evidence supporting their belief about the cause of Paul's suicide. No. of Tex., Inc. v. Tex. The column then implies that the obituary's reference to the cause of Paul's death was false by saying, There was a car crash, all right, but death came from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a time of remorse afterward. Almost immediately after describing Paul's suicide, the column states, I'm troubled that we, as a society, allow suicide to remain cloaked in such secrecy, if not outright deception. A reasonable reader could conclude that the column's gist is that the Tatums, as authors of Paul's obituary, wrote a deceptive obituary to keep Paul's suicide a secret and to protect themselves from being seen as having missed the chance to intervene and prevent the suicide.5. We determine substantial truth by assessing the publication's gist. See id. We recently cited Lipsky and placed the burden of proving falsity on the plaintiff in a libel case involving the Texas Citizens Participation Act, Civ. The gist also implies that the explanation the Tatums gave for the cause of Paul's death was false and that Paul committed suicide because of remorse rather than because of injuries suffered in the auto accident. But the court went on to hold that "to the extent that the column states that the Tatums acted deceptively, it is true." Id. Appellees' contrary argument fails on the first prong we referenced abovethe existence of a public controversy for the Tatums to participate in. Because the evidence raises a genuine fact issue that the column's gist was neither true nor substantially true, appellees' traditional and no-evidence summary judgment grounds addressing truth and substantial truth cannot support the trial court's judgment. In May 2010, Paul was a seventeen-year-old high school student. To the extent a negligence standard applies, there was no evidence of negligence. View "Dallas Morning News, Inc. v. Tatum" on Justia Law. Based on that evidence, the court concluded that a factfinder could find that the false gistthat Neely was disciplined for operating while using drugswas more damaging to Neely's reputation than the truththat Neely was disciplined for self-prescribing medications. Yet we're nearly blind to the greater threat of self-inflicted violence. Medical Malpractice denied) (objection that opinions are speculative can be raised for the first time on appeal). West sued for defamation, he lost the case on summary judgment, and the case came before the Utah Supreme Court. Id. And the secrecy surrounding suicide leaves us greatly underestimating the danger there. Learn more about FindLaws newsletters, including our terms of use and privacy policy. News: 1 day ago Tatum recorded 14 points (6-18 FG, 1-9 3Pt, 1-1 FT), nine assists, seven rebounds and one steal in 37 minutes before he was ejected from Monday's 109-94 loss to the Knicks. Posted By : / thalassery to wayanad ksrtc bus timings /; Under :international norms examplesinternational norms examples We agree with the Tatums. a. Constitutional Law Is there evidence that the column's gist was false? If you have STRONG suspicions to whom do you turn them over? Id. Id. Sch. The 2010 column, Shrouding suicide leaves its danger unaddressed, urged the public to talk more openly about suicide. at 187. Id. 07060041CV, 2007 WL 1098476, at *4 (Tex.App.Amarillo Apr. Am. 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