Jewell ruled a public figure

By: Jim Moscou bar raised in olympic-size lawsuit against atlanta daily

Aftershocks from the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta rumbled through a Georgia courtroom Oct. 5 when a state judge ruled Richard Jewell ? a security guard wrongly suspected as the bomber ? is in the eyes of the law a public figure in his suit against a major Atlanta daily.
The pretrial ruling hampers the former Olympic security guard's civil defamation suit against The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and its parent Cox Enterprises Inc. The paper named Jewell as an fbi suspect days after the July 27, 1996, park bombing.
Fulton County, Ga., Judge John R. Mather said Jewell ? who was ultimately cleared of any involvement in the incident and, in a rare instance, received a letter of apology from the U.S. Justice Department ? was a voluntary, limited-purpose public figure, a designation often applied to celebrities or government officials. The ruling raises the bar of proof in the case, which Jewell would have to clear to convince a jury he was defamed by the paper. Jewell will have to prove the Georgia daily acted with "actual malice" when it published articles naming him as a suspect in the bombing; that it knew it was reporting false facts; and that it behaved with reckless disregard for the truth.
As a private figure, the standard would have been much lower. Jewell simply would have had to prove the paper acted with negligence and carelessness in reporting information that could be considered defamatory.
The court reasoned Jewell was a "voluntary" public figure by noting that the days following the bombing and during numerous media interviews, Jewell used "his credibility and newfound publicity to relieve the anxiety of the public" and hoped "of influencing the resolution of this public controversy."
"There is simply no evidence Richard agreed to interviews to influence the outcome of the debate," said Jewell's attorney, L. Lin Wood, of the Atlanta-based Wood & Grant law firm. "He thought his employers wanted him to do the interviews."
Wood, who called the court's decision "clearly erroneous," said he will appeal the decision.
The media spotlight fell on Jewell because he found the explosive-laden knapsack moments before it detonated, killing two people. Jewell was able to get many in the crowd away from the package before it went off, and he discussed the incident extensively with the media.
Peter Canfield, an attorney at the Atlanta-based firm Dow, Lohnes & Albertson and counsel for the Journal-Constitution, said the court correctly recognized the Olympic bombing was newsworthy and Jewell as a public figure.
"By virtue of his own mind and appearances, he had become part of the story before The Atlanta Journal-Constitution accurately reported he had become the focus of the investigation," Canfield said.
Days following the bombing, Jewell appeared or was quoted in 11 media forums. By early August 1996, media reports on Jewell switched to focusing on erroneous law-enforcement suspicions that he may have planted the bomb in an effort to win public acclaim as a hero. Jewell later filed or threatened suits against the New York Post; cnn; nbc and its top news anchor, Tom Brokaw; and a local Georgia radio station. Jewell's attorney said his client settled all those claims for undisclosed amounts. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, however, "has been very vocal and public that it will never settle the Jewell case," Wood said.
Wood said Jewell's case to collect damages will continue, though he would not reveal the amount of being sought.
"The Richard Jewell case is alive and well. And I believe the damages to Richard Jewell is in the millions of dollars," Wood said. "And to deter a corporation like Cox, the amount of money [he'll ask the court to award] will be astronomical."

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