Southern Discomfort

Southern Discomfort

One line that guards freedom of the press from license is the law of libel. Editors are always mindful of it; advertising departments are sometimes less heedful.

Last March, reading a full-page ad in the New York Times, L. (for Lester) B. Sullivan, 39, police commissioner of Montgomery, Ala., decided that the Times had done him wrong. Sullivan had not even been mentioned by name; the ad was an appeal for funds to defend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Southern Negro leader, against charges of income-tax evasion. Nonetheless, Sullivan sued for libel, seeking $500,000 damages against the Times and four other defendants. Last week in Montgomery, a circuit court jury gave Lester Sullivan every dollar he asked for.

Just Begun. Though the verdict will be appealed, it was a considerable blow to the Times (which buried the story on page 67). Still pending are three more libel suits resulting from the same ad, including one by Alabama Governor John M. Patterson, asking $1,000,000. The Sullivan judgment strongly implied that the Times's trouble has only begun.

The Sullivan case was trouble that the Times might have avoided. When the ad was submitted to the paper last spring, no one apparently bothered to check it carefully for fact. Not until Governor Patterson demanded and got a public apology from the paper in May did the Times discover that the ad contained at least one error in fact together with some dangerous implications.

The ad erroneously stated that after students at Montgomery's Alabama State College, a Negro institution, held a quiet demonstration for integration, "state authorities" padlocked the students' dining hall "to starve them into submission." In addition, enemies of Dr. Martin Luther King were lumped together as "Southern violators" who "bombed his home," "arrested him seven times," and met his peaceful protests with "intimidation and violations."

Replotted Line. In court Sullivan's lawyer, Robert E. Steiner, loudly demanded vengeance. "Newspapers have got to tell the truth," he told the jury. "One way to get their attention and the attention of everybody else who publishes newspapers is to hit them in the pocketbook."

The Times argued that it did no business in Alabama and therefore could not be sued there, that it was not directly responsible for the ads it runs ("The publication of an ad does not reflect the judgment or the opinion of the editors"), and that Sullivan was not hurt anyway.

Sullivan conceded that his reputation had not been damaged by the ad. But under Alabama law, as in most states, the jury had a right to assess punitive judgment over and above actual civil damage. In clouting the Times for $500,000, the Alabamians may have been within their technical rights. But in awarding such damages to a man who admitted he had not been damaged, the jury had plainly replotted the line dividing press liberty and press license.

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