Court orders new trial in defamation case.

Byline: Barbara L. Jones

Editor's note: GateHouse Media, owner of Minnesota Lawyer, merged with Gannett in 2019.

[divider]

A lengthy and long-awaited Supreme Court opinion on defamation landed on Wednesday, Feb. 26, and delivered something to both sides.

The court said that the fair and accurate reporting privilege, a common law doctrine, protects the reporting of information about a matter of public concern that is disseminated by law enforcement officers at an official press conference or in an official press release.

The court also said that the privilege can be defeated by statements that are not a fair and accurate account of the official communications but did not define "fair and accurate."

It sent the case back to the trial court for a determination of whether the privilege was defeated by certain reports reports that a jury already found were not false. But that jury was not instructed on how to evaluate whether the reporting was inaccurate and thereby the privilege defeated, the Supreme Court said.

So the opinion adds some complexity to defamation law that is not necessarily welcome, lawyers said.

The 72-page opinion in Larson v. Gannett Co. was split 5-2. Justice Margaret Chutich wrote the majority opinion. Justice G. Barry Anderson concurred and dissented in a 27-page opinion, joined by Chief Justice Lorie Gildea. The case was argued in January 2019.

"We are far from an outlier in recognizing that the fair and accurate reporting privilege extends to press conferences held by law enforcement officers," Chutich wrote.

Police press conference

Ryan Larson did not kill Cold Spring police officer Tom Decker, but law enforcement apparently thought he did because they arrested him and then held a press conference about it. The Department of Public Safety issued a news release saying a SWAT team had arrested Larson and he had been booked into jail. A few days later he was released because police had no evidence.

KARE 11 and the St. Cloud Times reported what the police said, and Larson sued them for defamation. The jury returned a defense verdict, saying that the reported statements were not false because they accurately reported what the police said.

The trial court then ordered a new trial because the reported statements were not privileged. The Court of Appeals reversed the order for a new trial and remanded with instructions to enter judgment in favor of KARE's owner, Gannett Co. The Court of Appeals said that the media was protected by the fair-report privilege when it...