An Illinois state appeals court affirmed a ruling of summary judgment, finding that the actions of the Chicago Tribune Company did not rise to the level of “actual malice or disregard for the truth” in mistakenly reporting that a former NBA player had committed a crime.
The plaintiff in the case was Edward Arnett “Eddie” Johnson. Born and raised in Chicago, Johnson starred as a basketball player for Westinghouse High School and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before being the 29th player drafted in the 1981 National Basketball Association (NBA) draft by the Kansas City Kings. He played for 17 seasons in the NBA for the Kansas City Kings, Phoenix Suns, Seattle SuperSonics, Charlotte Hornets, Indiana Pacers, Denver Nuggets, and Houston Rockets before retiring in 1999. Johnson enjoyed success in the NBA, scoring over 19,000 points, earning the Sixth Man of the Year Award in 1999, and becoming the league’s all-time leading scorer off the bench.
The impetus of the dispute stemmed from a story published by the Chicago Tribune on August 9, 2006, which mistakenly identified the plaintiff as a man with the same name who had been arrested for residential burglary and sexually assaulting an eight-year-old girl.
The Tribune adapted the story from another story that had been published a day earlier by the Associated Press. That story, titled “Ex-NBA Star Johnson Accused in Sex Rap,” had a dateline of Ocala, Florida and was placed on the wire at 11:42 p.m. It began with the lead paragraph “Former NBA All-Star Eddie Johnson has been arrested and charged with sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl, authorities said Tuesday night.” The ten paragraph article noted that Johnson had numerous prior convictions. The tenth and final paragraph indicated that “Johnson, a 6-foot-2 guard from Auburn University, played in the NBA from 1977-1987 with the Atlanta Hawks, Cleveland Cavaliers and Seattle SuperSonics. He represented the Hawks in the 1980 and 1981 NBA All-Star games and scored 10,163 points in his career.”
The editors on duty that night at the Tribune scanned the first few paragraphs of the story and adapted the piece for its daily feature entitled “Press Box,” whereby the editors on duty would review incoming articles and digest them into short news reports to summarize sports stories of note. The deadline for closing the print edition was 12:30 a.m.
One of editor’s colleagues saw the AP article and told Shapiro that there was a story about Eddie Johnson and that Johnson had played at the University of Illinois. Shapiro clicked on the link and read the first three or four paragraphs of the story. Shapiro determined that the story was newsworthy, performed a cut and paste of the portion of the article he felt was pertinent, in this case most of the first two paragraphs of the AP article, and transferred it into the press box file. Shapiro also drafted the caption “Former NBA Illini Star Accused of Sexual Assault” and added the word Illinois to the first paragraph of the article.
The editor was unaware that there were two Eddie Johnson’s who played in the NBA, one with a clean image and the other with a checkered past.
When the associate managing editor for sports learned of the mistake the next day, he immediately went into damage control, speaking with the plaintiff and publishing a 13-paragraph retraction, entitled “An Apology to Chicago’s Eddie Johnson,” the next day on page two of the paper.
As far as the plaintiff was concerned, the damage was done. Johnson filed a libel complaint with three counts sounding in negligence, false light, and defamation per se on October 12, 2006. On September 4, 2013, the circuit court granted the Tribune’s motion for summary judgment and the plaintiff appealed.
On appeal, Johnson argued that the circuit court erred in finding that he failed to present a genuine issue of material fact. Johnson also argued that there is evidence of record from which a jury could find that the defendant acted with actual malice and reckless disregard for the truth.
In its analysis, the appeals court leaned heavily on a holding in Harte-Hanks Communications, Inc. v. Connaughton, 491 U.S. 657, 685, 109 S. Ct. 2678, 105 L. Ed. 2d 562 (1989), that “actual malice is not demonstrated through a showing of ill will or malice or motivation simply for profits, but with a reckless disregard for the truth that includes a high degree of awareness of the probable falsity or that the defendant had serious doubts as to the truth of the statement published.”
The appeals court continued, noting that “there is no dispute that the plaintiff is a public figure having played major collegiate and professional basketball and appearing regularly on television as a color analyst for NBA games both regionally and nationally. There also is no dispute that the defendant published a newspaper article including false information that was hurtful and damaging to plaintiff and as defendant repeatedly admits, unacceptable. The plaintiff contends that the court erred by granting summary judgment because a genuine issue of material fact existed as a reasonable jury could find the defendant acted with actual malice and reckless disregard in publishing the libelous article.
“However, the plaintiff failed to present clear and convincing evidence that defendant’s employees … seriously doubted the truth of the article before it was published.”
The plaintiff tried to liken the instant action to cases that “involved a deliberate effort to avoid the truth or disputed issues of fact and credibility,” wrote the court. But “here there was no subjective understanding or awareness that the editors had identified the wrong Eddie Johnson. Rather, there was only evidence that there was a failure to read the entire AP article and no evidence presented to doubt the editors’ good faith belief that they had the story correct.
“… The Tribune’s malfeasance and nonfeasance do not rise to the level of malice necessary to create a genuine issue of material fact that would warrant a reversal of a motion for summary judgment on a claim for defamatory damages by a public figure.”
Edward Arnett “Eddie” Johnson v. The Chicago Tribune Company, et al.; App. Ct. Ill. , 1st Dist., Sec, Div.; No. 1-13-3087, 2014 IL App (1st) 133087-U; 2014 Ill. App. Unpub. LEXIS 2315; 9/30/14
