Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Ass'n, Inc. v. Bresler

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Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Assn., Inc. v. Bresler
Seal of the United States Supreme Court.svg
Argued February 24–25, 1970
Decided May 18, 1970
Full case nameGreenbelt Cooperative Publishing Association, Inc., et al., Petitioners v. Charles S. Bresler
Citations398 U.S. 6 ( more )
90 S. Ct. 1537; 26 L. Ed. 2d 6; 1970 U.S. LEXIS 42; 1 Media L. Rep. 1589
Case history
Prior 253 Md. 324, 252 A.2d 755 (1969)
Holding
Held that using the word "blackmail" in a newspaper article about a public figure "was no more than rhetorical hyperbole" and that finding such usage as libel "would subvert the most fundamental meaning of a free press".
Court membership
Chief Justice
Warren E. Burger
Associate Justices
Hugo Black  · William O. Douglas
John M. Harlan II  · William J. Brennan Jr.
Potter Stewart  · Byron White
Thurgood Marshall
Case opinions
MajorityStewart, joined by Burger, Harlan, Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun
ConcurrenceWhite
ConcurrenceBlack, joined by Douglas
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. I

Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Association, Inc. v. Bresler, 398 U.S. 6 (1970), [1] is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that using the word "blackmail" in a newspaper article "was no more than rhetorical hyperbole" and that finding such usage as libel "would subvert the most fundamental meaning of a free press" guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The ruling also touched on the plaintiff's status as a public figure.

Supreme Court of the United States Highest court in the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. Established pursuant to Article III of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, it has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, including suits between two or more states and those involving ambassadors. It also has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all federal court and state court cases that involve a point of federal constitutional or statutory law. The Court has the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. Executive acts can be struck down by the Court for violating either the Constitution or federal law. However, it may act only within the context of a case in an area of law over which it has jurisdiction. The court may decide cases having political overtones, but it has ruled that it does not have power to decide non-justiciable political questions.

First Amendment to the United States Constitution Law guaranteeing freedom of speech, religion, assembly, press and petitions and prohibiting establishment of an official religion

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws which respect an establishment of religion, prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.

Contents

Background

Dorothy Sucher, a reporter for the Greenbelt News Review of Greenbelt, Maryland, covered a 1965 city council hearing in a case where developer Charles S. Bresler was trying to obtain variances to build a high-density housing development on land he owned while the city was seeking to purchase a parcel owned by Bresler that would be the site of a new high school. Bresler indicated that he would be willing to sell the property the city wanted as long as he received the variances he was seeking. Residents at the hearing were critical of the deal and of the way that Bresler was using the leverage he had in delaying the sale of the proposed high school property to obtain the right to build more densely on the properties he owned. [2] An article [3] written by Sucher in the October 14, 1965 issue of the Greenbelt News Review reporting on the council meeting quoted a resident saying that "It seems that this is a slight case of blackmail" continuing to state that "the word was echoed by many speakers from the audience" a charge that was rejected in the article by a city councilmember who said that this was not blackmail, but was part of a negotiations process that was "a two-way street". Bresler filed a lawsuit in Prince George's County circuit court claiming that the allegations and use of the word "blackmail" constituted libel, and a jury found in his favor, awarding him $5,000 in compensatory damages and $12,500 in punitive damages. [4] The judgment was affirmed by the Maryland Court of Appeals, [5] and certiorari was granted by the U.S. Supreme Court. [1]

Dorothy Sucher was an American author and psychotherapist who worked as a reporter at the Greenbelt News Review, where an article that she wrote that quoted critics of a developers calling his plans "blackmail" initially resulted in a $17,500 judgement against the paper. The U.S. Supreme Court would later overturn the lower court verdict, ruling in Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Assn. v. Bresler that the use of "rhetorical hyperbole" in such cases is covered by the First Amendment, a major victory that supported Freedom of the press in the United States.

<i>Greenbelt News Review</i> newspaper published continuously since 1937, as a cooperative, in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States

The Greenbelt News Review is a weekly newspaper that was established in 1937 as a volunteer cooperative shortly after settlement of Greenbelt, Maryland, and was originally named the Greenbelt Cooperator until its name was changed in 1954. It has been published without interruption every week since its founding, and is distributed free by a network of carriers to all city residents.

Greenbelt, Maryland City in Maryland, United States

Greenbelt is a city in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States, and a suburb of Washington, D.C.. Greenbelt is notable for being the first and the largest of the three experimental and controversial New Deal Greenbelt Towns, planned and built by the Federal government of the United States. The cooperative community was conceived in 1935, by Undersecretary of Agriculture Rexford Guy Tugwell, who was perceived by some of his contemporaries as having held a collectivist ideology, which was utilized as a source of opposition to the Greenbelt Towns project throughout its short duration. The project came into legal existence in the spring of 1935. On April 8, 1935, the United States Congress passed the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935. Under the authority granted to him from this legislation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order, on May 1, 1935, establishing the United States Resettlement Administration (RA/RRA).

Opinion of the Court

In 1970, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8–0 to overturn the lower court ruling. The majority found that Bresler, who served in another district as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, was a public figure as defined by New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) and that the standard that the plaintiff would have to satisfy would be to show that the term was used with malice, with knowledge that the claim was false or in reckless disregard for the truth. The Supreme Court found that the lower court judge's instructions were incorrect in setting a standard for making a verdict. The court found no dispute with the contention that the descriptions in Sucher's article were accurately reported and that the word "blackmail" had been used. The opinion written by Associated Justice Potter Stewart found that "even the most careless reader must have perceived that the word was no more than rhetorical hyperbole" and that "It is simply impossible to believe that a reader who reached the word 'blackmail' in either article would not have understood exactly what was meant" and that no reader would have interpreted the word in question to mean that Bresler had committed the criminal offense. To have ruled otherwise "would subvert the most fundamental meaning of a free press". [1]

Maryland House of Delegates lower house of the Maryland General Assembly

The Maryland House of Delegates is the lower house of the legislature of the State of Maryland. It consists of 141 delegates elected from 47 districts. The House of Delegates Chamber is in the Maryland State House on State Circle in Annapolis, the state capital. The State House also houses the Maryland State Senate Chamber and the offices of the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of the State of Maryland. Each delegate has offices in Annapolis, in the nearby Casper R. Taylor Jr. House Office Building.

A public figure is a person, such as a politician, celebrity, social media personality, or business leader, who has a certain social position within a certain scope and a significant influence and so is often widely concerned by the public, can benefit enormously from society, and is closely related to public interests in society.

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that established the actual malice standard that must be met for press reports about public officials to be considered libel. The decision defended free reporting of the civil rights campaigns in the southern United States. It is one of the key decisions supporting the freedom of the press. The actual malice standard requires that a plaintiff alleging defamation who is a public official or public figure prove that the publisher of the statement in question knew that the statement was false or acted in reckless disregard of its truth or falsity. Because of the extremely high burden of proof on the plaintiff, and the difficulty of proving the defendant's knowledge and intentions, such claims by public figures rarely prevail.

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Actual malice in United States law is a legal requirement imposed upon public officials or public figures when they file suit for libel. Unlike other individuals who are less well-known to the general public, public officials and public figures are held to a higher standard for what they must prove before they may succeed in a defamation lawsuit.

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Freedom of the press in the United States is legally protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. This amendment is generally understood to prevent the government from interfering with the distribution of information and opinions.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Ass'n, Inc. v. Bresler, 398 U.S. 6 (1970). PD-icon.svg This article incorporates public domain material from this U.S government document.
  2. ↑ Hevesi, Dennis. "Dorothy Sucher, Reporter in Press-Freedom Case, Dies at 77", The New York Times , August 31, 2010. Accessed September 2, 2010.
  3. ↑ Sucher, Dorothy (1965-10-14), "School Site Stirs Up Council Rezoning Deal Offer Debated" (PDF), Greenbelt News Review , p. 1
  4. ↑ Buerger, Megan. "Dorothy Sucher dies at 77; wrote story that was test case for freedom of press", The Washington Post , August 28, 2010. Accessed September 2, 2010.
  5. ↑ Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Ass'n, Inc. v. Bresler, 253 Md. 324, 252 A.2d 755 (1969).
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