Word: paragraphs
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...victory was that, in an unusual procedure, Federal Judge Abraham Sofaer had asked the jury to disclose its partial findings step by step instead of deciding all elements of the case before announcing a verdict. On their third day of deliberations, the jurors said that they interpreted the disputed paragraph, which reported on discussions Sharon had held with Lebanese Christian Phalangists before the massacre, as having a defamatory meaning. Two days later they announced their conclusion that the contested passage was false. In deciding last week for TIME on "actual malice," the third and most complex point, the jurors determined...
...abroad. Sharon has never made any secret of his desire to become Israel's Prime Minister; the morning after the trial ended, he said on NBC-TV's Today Show that "I believe that one day I'll try to do that." By persuading the jury that the paragraph was false, Sharon has helped his cause, even though he lost the case...
Sharon's lawsuit was aimed at the 22nd paragraph in TIME's eight-page story. The passage described a sympathy call Sharon paid to the Gemayel family the day after Bashir's death and said that details about the visit were contained in a classified Appendix B to the report. The paragraph went on to say: "Sharon reportedly told the Gemayels that the Israeli army would be moving ; into West Beirut and that he expected the Christian forces to go into the Palestinian refugee camps. Sharon also reportedly discussed with the Gemayels the need for the Phalangists to take revenge...
...reaching their verdict, the jurors said that TIME's mistaken report that the information was actually part of Appendix B "aggravated" the defamatory interpretation they read into the disputed paragraph. But the judge had agreed with TIME on this point and had told the jury that the alleged libel did not center on the content of the appendix but rather on the substance of what TIME's paragraph said--namely, that Sharon discussed revenge with the Phalangists before they were sent into the camps...
...stations later, several of the jurors explained how the deliberations had gone. Lydia Burdick, 35, said they decided the passage had a defamatory meaning because it "went far beyond" the Kahan report. Patricia De Loatch, 27, a marketing specialist for AT&T, said she concluded that the TIME paragraph was false because the magazine had not offered evidence to back up its claim. "I felt he (Sharon) knew there would be a massacre," she told the Wall Street Journal. "I wanted to believe what TIME said. But there just wasn't any proof." (Under...