Word: nbc
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...million suit blaming NBC for a crime is dismissed...
...when Olivia was nine, she was raped by three girls and a boy with a beer bottle on a San Francisco beach. Just four days earlier, NBC-TV had aired a movie called Born Innocent, which depicted four female inmates of a detention home raping a teen-age girl with a "plumber's helper." Arguing that NBC should be held responsible for causing Olivia's rape, Lewis slapped the network and its San Francisco affiliate, KRON-TV, with an $11 million suit on Olivia's behalf...
Personal Injury Lawyer Lewis sought to try the case by the same negligence standard used in an ordinary whiplash suit. NBC should have foreseen that its movie might inspire violent crime, he maintained; therefore the network, like a homeowner who leaves a banana peel lying on his front stoop where someone could slip on it, should pay damages to the victim. Constitutional Lawyer Abrams, on the other hand, argued that his clients should be held liable only if the network actually intended to cause attacks like the one on Niemi...
Though speech that intentionally incites violence is not protected by the First Amendment, allowed Abrams, drama or news reports that merely portray violence are covered. Lewis argued vehemently against this First Amendment defense. If intentional "incitement" were accepted as the test for finding NBC and KRON-TV guilty, he told Judge Robert Dossee, "I'll pack up my briefcase and go home. I'd have to be idiotic to bring such a case." Siding with NBC, Dossee proceeded to send Lewis packing; since Lewis admitted that he could not prove incitement, the case was dismissed. Said Lewis...
...other result would have set a dangerous precedent for broadcasters who report on violence or writers who portray it in fiction. Yet NBC has been justly criticized for airing Born Innocent at 8 p.m., when many impressionable youngsters can be expected to tune in. Editorialized the Washington Post, "One still feels a sense of dissatisfaction here, as the true justice of Miss Niemi's case seems to hang somewhere between her suffering and the Tightness and necessity of the First Amendment." The courts may not be the proper place to resolve it, but the controversy over violence...