Judge throws out Briggs & Stratton
suit
By NCR STAFF
A $30 million suit brought by Briggs & Stratton Corp. against
the National Catholic Reporter was dismissed last week by a federal
judge in Wisconsin.
The suit, which drew considerable attention in the national press,
was filed after NCR published a cover story December 2, 1994, titled
Adios, American Dream. The story chronicled the effects of layoffs
at the companys Milwaukee facility on the work force, their families and
the community. An accompanying column touched upon the moral issues implicit in
the companys decision to move jobs to Mexico and other areas where
cheaper labor was available at a time when the company was making record
profits.
In an April 10 order granting NCRs motion for
dismissal of the case, Judge C.N. Clevert threw out claims of libel, malice and
invasion of privacy made by the remaining plaintiff in the suit, George
Thompson III, director of corporate communications and community relations at
Briggs & Stratton.
In his ruling, Clevert said that Briggs & Stratton failed to
produce any evidence that the articles in question contained any
falsehoods.
Further, the judge pointed out that the paper had made repeated
attempts to obtain the companys point of view in preparing the articles
but had been turned away by Thompson, the firms principal
spokesperson.
This is a significant victory for the kind of independent
journalism that isnt afraid to raise difficult and provocative
issues, said NCR Publisher Thomas C. Fox, who was the papers
editor at the time the stories ran. We knew from the outset that the suit
was without merit, and Judge Cleverts ruling is a clear vindication of
that conviction.
The suit appeared to be nothing more than an attempt to
bully and intimidate the press. We are heartened that in this case the First
Amendments free speech guarantees were upheld. We are fortunate to have
had the kind of insurance that gave us access to the finest legal counsel and
permitted us to withstand the prolonged drain on human energy and financial
resources.
It is unfortunate, of course, that it took nearly two years
to arrive at the ruling that the case was without any merit, said
Fox.
Attorney Robert Sutton, who represented Thompson, told NCR
April 15 that he disagreed with Cleverts ruling. He said he would
recommend that Thompson appeal the case, but that Thompson had not made a
decision. An appeal must be made within 30 days of the ruling.
NCR was represented by attorneys Robert J. Dreps and Brady
C. Williamson of Madison, Wis., and Tennyson Schad of New York.
The dismissal order, entered April 10 in the U.S. District Court
in Milwaukee, was the latest of three developments in the suit that was filed
in June 1996. In the earliest filing, plaintiffs included Briggs &
Stratton, its president John Shiely, company attorney Thomas Krukowski, as well
as Thompson. The Briggs & Stratton officials charged that the article and
column libeled them and invaded their privacy by publicly identifying the
officials as Catholics. The column libeled them, they charged, by questioning
whether moves made by the company were consistent with Catholic social
teachings.
In November, Clevert ruled that NCR had not violated their
privacy by reporting that the officials were Roman Catholics. Clevert also
ruled at the time that the court had no jurisdiction over religious matters and
so would refrain from addressing whether NCR defamed the plaintiffs by
asking whether their business decisions may have been in conflict with Catholic
teaching. But Clevert agreed to hear the complaints that the officials were
defamed by the news account and column apart from the religious considerations.
The trial was scheduled to begin April 27.
Then in December, Shiely and Krukowski filed a motion withdrawing
from the suit, stating that their claim of libel had been vindicated when
Clevert agreed to a trial on the issues.
At the time, Fox said, Interestingly, Briggs &
Strattons withdrawal comes just seven days after our attorneys filed a
lengthy motion requesting dismissal of the suit based on the actual merits of
the article and column in contention. It was the first time the court could
actually assess what we wrote and measure it against the law. At that moment,
Briggs & Stratton stepped out.
Shiely, in a news release at the time, said that Thompson would
continue to press the suit.
In the ruling granting the dismissal, Clevert said, There is
no allegation that anyone ... was misquoted.
In fact, the judge continued, it is clear that
the defendants thoroughly investigated the facts underlying the articles.
He called attention to the efforts of NCR reporter Leslie Wirpsa, who
wrote the articles. Wirpsa reviewed news accounts of the controversy,
spent four days in Milwaukee conducting nearly two dozen interviews and
compiled an extensive file of notes and published materials which she used in
writing the news articles, the judge wrote.
The judge also noted that NCR had repeatedly
attempted to get Thompsons comments on the story. Wirpsa requested
interviews with Briggs & Stratton officials on several occasions before
writing her story, but the company, by its spokesperson, Thompson, refused her
requests. Neither did the company or Thompson respond to the newspapers
requests for news releases or any other information about the companys
perspective on the controversy.
Clevert further pointed out that NCR, before going to press
with the story, called Briggs & Stratton in an effort to do
anything necessary -- fly anywhere at any time to accommodate the
companys representative in order to get Briggs & Strattons side
of the story. Thompson again refused comment. Based on the foregoing, this
court is satisfied that there is not clear and convincing evidence that the
defendants acted with actual malice.
Briggs & Stratton officials originally had demanded that
NCR publish unedited a seven-page, single-spaced letter in reaction to
the story. NCR refused because the letter, according to Fox, went well
beyond the scope of the story and because Briggs & Stratton officials had
refused to answer questions in the preparation of the piece. Fox offered to run
a shorter letter that went through the normal editing process, but Briggs &
Stratton officials declined the offer.
Schad, who over the past 35 years has served as counsel for Time,
Inc., and other major national publishers, commented, This is not a legal
victory, it is a foregone conclusion. They used the libel laws not to try to
extract any money from NCR but rather to send a shot across
NCRs bow. Then, to put this in context, after NCR refused
to retract the story it believed to be fair and accurate, their shots were
aimed amidships -- they were trying to sink the paper.
He said the suit is of interest to the wider journalism community
because it follows a recent trend where large corporations have sought to
bully the press into presenting a more benign view of corporate depredations.
Everybody knows that smaller publications often cannot fund very expensive
litigation. So if you sue the press or you threaten to sue them, they end up
faced with having to run a seven-page, single-spaced letter apologizing for the
article or defending its editorial independence in a potentially ruinous
litigation. Its intimidation, and unfortunately all too often the
publications have no choice but to cave.
David Anderson, media law professor at the University of Texas,
said he is not one to automatically condemn suits against the media. In
todays litigious society, he said, I think it is kind of good for
media to have to worry the way everyone else has to worry. He said
physicians who get sued sound very much like reporters who get sued; they feel
their integrity has been challenged, and defending themselves takes enormous
time and resources, yet none of us thinks physicians ought to be
immune.
However, he said, when you have a lawsuit like this that had
no chance of success from the inception, there can be nothing but frustration.
At the end of the day, all you can say is thank God it was dismissed, which is
what should have been done the first day it was filed. Unfortunately, there is
no way for the legal system to deal with it the day it was filed.
Anderson, who reviewed the judges decision, called the
action a silly lawsuit as far as Thompson is concerned. It is clear he
was not defamed in the story. He said the ease with which large
corporations can file suit is a real problem for media because they have
the resources and the thin skin to make life miserable for anyone who tries to
report on business operations or the implications of business
operations.
National Catholic Reporter, April 24,
1998
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