Calif. Court Allows $27 Million Libel Suit

By: E&P Staff A California appellate court has ruled the state's anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) law cannot stop a $27 million libel suit filed by a baseball team owner against the Daily Republic in Fairfield, Calif.

Bruce Portner, owner of the former Solano Steelheads baseball club, sued the McNaughton family-owned newspaper and reporter Jess Sullivan in 2003, alleging the paper had repeatedly published false statements about him and his business and had attributed to him statements he did not make. According to the lawsuit, Sullivan was employed briefly by the team as a mascot. The lawsuit also named as defendants Publisher Foy McNaughton and Editor Bill James.

Details of the decision were reported Tuesday in The Reporter in Vacaville, Calif., in an article by senior staff writer Brian Hamlin.

The Daily Republic had argued in Solano County Superior Court and in the First Appellate District Court of Appeals that the libel suit violated the anti-SLAPP law and infringed on the defendants' right to free speech.

But the three-judge appellate panel ruled that Portner's allegations that words were put in his mouth, if accepted by a judge or jury, "would support an inference of actual malice."

"The differences between Portner's version of what he told Sullivan and what Sullivan reported him as saying are stark, not subtle," the panel wrote, according to the Reporter article. "Those discrepancies alone are hard to reconcile with mere negligence or misinterpretation on the reporter's part."

Portner also provided an arguable motive "that [reporter] Sullivan and the management of the Daily Republic might have harbored for deliberately seeking to cast him in a negative light." The court noted allegations that Portner had fired Sullivan as the team's mascot. "There is also evidence from which it may be inferred that the Daily Republic had a financial motive for wanting Portner's team out of Vacaville: the potential loss of sports section advertising revenue to a competing Vacaville newspaper," the court wrote.

The Daily Republic's attorney, Charity Kenyon, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment on the ruling.

Portner could not be reached. The Reporter story quoted this prepared statement from the team owner: "While the First Amendment provides sweeping guarantees to protect the media, it does not allow the media to outright lie, fabricate stories, twist facts to suit their needs and create an endless drumbeat of negative stories based on the reckless disregard of the truth to discredit an individual or business."