Word: libellant
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...page charge that took two hours to read, Federal Judge Abraham Sofaer outlined the complex issues that the four women and two men on the jury had to evaluate. In reaching a verdict on former Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon's $50 million libel suit against Time Inc., he explained, they faced three sets of questions about a single paragraph in TIME's Feb. 21, 1983, cover story about an official Israeli report on the 1982 massacre of hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in West Beirut. First, could the disputed passage, which reported on discussions...
...very different story. By painstakingly unraveling The Uncounted Enemy, Westmoreland's principal attorney, Dan Burt, is trying to convince the jury that the only public deception was by CBS, not by Westmoreland and the high command in Saigon. Last Tuesday, Westmoreland rested his case in his $120 million libel suit against the network. CBS Lawyer David Boies immediately began the arduous process of piecing the documentary back together in an effort to show that it was true, or at the very least that CBS had every reason to believe it was true...
...recent election, Bork continued, "many cruel and damaging things were said," some of which "may well meet the law's standards for actual malice --reckless disregard for the truth." But "we would be astonished and highly disapproving if the defamed candidate brought an action for libel...
...past few years, a remarkable upsurge in libel actions, accompanied by a startling inflation of damage awards, has threatened to impose a self- censorship which can as effectively inhibit debate and criticism as would overt government regulation." Bork also sees "evidence mounting that juries do not give adequate attention to limits imposed by the First Amendment," and when this is so, judges "should take cases from juries...
Bork obviously hoped to start a dialogue on the subject. Judge Scalia agreed on the problem but not on the solution: "What a strange notion that the problem of excessive libel awards should be solved by permitting, in political debate, intentional destruction of reputation--rather than by placing a legislative limit upon the amount of libel recovery...