Word: libeler
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...week, hugging fans and signing autographs for jurors. After eight days of testimony and three of deliberation, the jurors had provided a classic Tinseltown ending to a televised trial that was followed as avidly as a soap opera. They awarded Burnett a whopping $1.6 million in damages in her libel suit against the sensation-seeking National Enquirer (circ. 5,100,000). Said the relieved star: "There...
...Enquirer Columnist R. Couri Hay), that staffers had made efforts to verify the tip, and that a retraction ("These events did not occur") was published as soon as the tabloid learned it was wrong. Under California law a retraction severely limits damages against a newspaper involved in a libel action. But Judge Peter Smith ruled that the Enquirer was a magazine and thus not protected. The Enquirer's defense was then seriously undermined when a reporter who had been asked to verify the item testified that his editor had insisted on running the story despite the reporter...
Still pending against the Enquirer are about $100 million in libel suits brought by other Hollywood figures, including Rory Calhoun, Phil Silvers, Paul Lynde, Agent Marty Ingels and Wife Shirley Jones, Ed McMahon and Rudy Vallee. Just last week, Singer Helen Reddy and Husband/Manager Jeff Wald added a $30 million suit to the tabloid's crowded courthouse calendar. Said Wald: "I feel it is ludicrous for this publication to hide behind the First Amendment. It's like someone practicing human sacrifice and justifying it based on freedom of religion...
Within the Hollywood community, the trial is being watched as closely as the bottom line on a production contract. Waiting in the wings with their own seven-or eight-figure libel suits against the Enquirer are Rory Calhoun, Phil Silvers, Paul Lynde, Agent Marty Ingels and Wife Shirley Jones, Ed McMahon and Rudy Vallee, all of whom evidently agree with Burnett that "it's time to stand up and be counted and not let people like this get away with...
...when lawsuits, particularly those by Robert Mitchum and Heiress Doris Duke, severely dampened Confidential magazine's penchant for unfounded gossip. Confidential's circulation plummeted from 4.1 million to about 300,000, and the magazine folded in 1969. The Enquirer boasts that the Burnett case is the first libel trial since Generoso Pope Jr. bought the tabloid in 1952. But that is because it occasionally settles out of court...