Members of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed an $8 million defamation award to former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore on Friday.
According to the ruling, in 2017, “Roy Moore ran as the Republican nominee in a special election to fill an open seat for one of Alabama’s United States senators. In the final weeks before the election, multiple news outlets reported that several women had accused Moore of inappropriate sexual conduct with them when they were young. Senate Majority PAC (SMP) grabbed onto the news reports and ran a campaign ad that stated, among other things, in separate individual frames that (1) “‘Moore was actually banned from the Gadsden Mall . . . for soliciting sex from young girls,’” and (2) “[o]ne he approached ‘was 14 and working as Santa’s helper.’” SMP ran the ad hundreds of times, and Moore eventually lost the election. Moore sued SMP for defamation and false-light invasion of privacy under Alabama law, arguing in relevant part that the two statements above when read together created the false defamatory implication that he had solicited the 14-year-old girl working as Santa’s helper for sex. Those two claims proceeded to a jury trial. The jury found SMP liable for defamation and false-light invasion of privacy, and it awarded Moore $8.2 million in compensatory damages. The district court denied SMP’s renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law or for a new trial, and SMP appealed.”
U.S. Circuit Judges Jill Pryor, Elizabeth Branch, and Frank Hull reversed the award to Moore and said he failed to prove SMP published the ad with “actual malice.”
“SMP raises several issues on appeal, including that the district court erred in denying its renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law because Moore is a public figure and he failed to present clear and convincing evidence that SMP published the implication in the ad with actual malice as required under the New York Times v. Sullivan standard. 376 U.S. 254 (1964). After careful review and with the benefit of oral argument, we agree with SMP. Accordingly, we reverse the district court’s order denying SMP’s renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law, and remand with instructions for the district court to enter judgment for SMP,” Pryor, Branch, and Hull said in the ruling.
Moore is considering a petition for review at the Supreme Court, where at least three justices have expressed interest in revisiting the burden of proving actual malice that has evolved through case law, Jeffrey Wittenbrink, a Baton Rouge attorney representing Moore, told Bloomberg Law. Seeking review from the full Eleventh Circuit is also an option.
“The conventional wisdom is that a public figure can’t hardly get a judgment for defamation,” he told the outlet, adding the trial jury still ruled in Moore’s favor on the actual malice question.
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