Monitor Patriot Company v. Roy/Opinion of the Court

On September 10, 1960, three days before the New Hampshire Democratic Party's primary election of candidates for the United States Senate, the Concord Monitor, a daily newspaper in Concord, New Hampshire, published a syndicated 'D.C. Merry-Go-Round' column discussing the forthcoming election. The column spoke of political maneuvering in the primary campaign, referred to the criminal records of several of the candidates, and characterized Alphonse Roy, one of the candidates, as a 'former small-time bootlegger.' Roy was not elected in the primary, and he subsequently sued the Monitor Patriot Co. and the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), the distributor of the column, for libel.

The newspaper and NANA offered 'truth' as their primary defense at trial, and evidence was presented on the issue of whether or not Roy had in fact been a bootlegger during the prohibition era. The defendants also alleged that they had published in good faith, without malice, with a reasonable belief in the probable truth of the charge, and on a lawful occasion. At the close of the evidence, the trial judge instructed the jury at great length on the law to be applied to the case. Three possible defenses emerged from these jury instructions.

First, the trial judge told the jury that Roy was a 'public official' by virtue of his candidacy in the primary. As a consequence, a special rule, requiring a showing that the article was false and had been published with 'knowledge of its falsity or with a reckless disregard of whether it was false or true,' would apply so long as the libel concerned 'official conduct' as opposed to 'private conduct.' This private-public distinction was elaborated as follows: 'Is it more probable than otherwise that the publication that the plaintiff was a former small-time bootlegger was a public affair on a par with official conduct of public officials?' The trial judge went on:

'As a candidate for the United State Senate, the plaintiff     was within the public official concept, and a candidate must      surrender to public scrutiny and discussion so must of his      private character as affects his fitness for office. That is,     anything which might touch on Alphonse Roy's fitness for the      office of United States Senator would come within the concept      of official conduct. If it would not touch upon or be     relevant to his fitness for the office for which he was a      candidate but was rather a bringing forward of the      plaintiff's long forgotten misconduct in which the public had      no interest, then it would be a private matter in the private      sector.'

The judge then instructed the jury that if it found the libel to be in the 'public sector' it must bring in a verdict for NANA, since there had been no evidence that NANA had engaged in knowing or reckless falsehood, but that it still had to on the 'preponderance of the evidence' whether the newspaper was liable.

Supposing the publication to be in the 'private sector,' the trial judge instructed the jury that there were two possible defenses available to the newspaper and NANA. The first was 'justification,' which would prevail if the jury found that the article was both true and published on a 'lawful occasion.' The second defense was 'conditional privilege,' which could prevail even if the jury found the article to be false, but only if it also found that its publication was 'on a lawful occasion, in good faith, for a justifiable purpose, and with a belief founded on reasonable grounds of the truth of the matter published.'

The jury returned a verdict of $20,000, of which $10,000 was against the newspaper and $10,000 against NANA. On appeal, the New Hampshire Supreme Court affirmed the judgment, holding that the trial judge properly sent to the jury the question of whether or not the particular libel alleged was 'relevant' to Roy's fitness for office. 109 N.H. 441, 254 A.2d 832. We granted certiorari in order to consider the constitutional issues presented by the case. 397 U.S. 904, 90 S.Ct. 909, 25 L.Ed.2d 85.

* In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 279-280, 84 S.Ct. 710, 726, 11 L.Ed.2d 686, we held that the First and Fourteenth Amendments require 'a federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with 'actual malice'-that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.' The rule of New York Times was based on a recognition that the First Amendment guarantee of a free press is inevitably in tension with state libel laws designed to secure society's interest in the protection of individual reputation. The approach of New York Times was to identify a class of person- there public officials-and a type of activity-there official conduct-and to require as to defamations respecting them a particularly high standard of liability-knowing falsehood or reckless disregard of the truth. Later cases have made it clear that the applicability of this basic approach is not limited to those in public office or to the performance of official acts, or, for that matter, to conventional civil libel suits. Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64, 85 S.Ct. 209, 13 L.Ed.2d 125; Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 388 U.S. 130, 87 S.Ct. 1975, 18 L.Ed.2d 1094; Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Assn. v. Bresler, 398 U.S. 6, 90 S.Ct. 1537, 26 L.Ed.2d 6.

This case went to the jury in December 1966, after our decisions in New York Times and Garrison, but before Curtis and Greenbelt. The trial judge instructed the jury that Roy, as a candidate for elective public office, was a 'public official,' and that characterization has not been challenged here. Given the later cases, it might be preferable to categorize a candidate as a 'public figure,' if for no other reason than to avoid straining the common meaning of words. But the question is of no importance so far as the standard of liability in this case is concerned, for it is abundantly clear that, whichever term is applied, publications concerning candidates must be accorded at least as much protection under the First and Fourteenth Amendments as those concerning occupants of public office. That New York Times itself was intended to apply to candidates, in spite of the use of the more restricted 'public official' terminology, is readily apparent from that opinion's text and citations to case law. And if it be conceded that the First Amendment was 'fashioned to assure the unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people,' Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 484, 77 S.Ct. 1304, 1308, 1 L.Ed.2d 1498, then it can hardly be doubted that the constitutional guarantee has its fullest and most urgent application precisely to the conduct of campaigns for political office.

The jury in this case returned verdicts against both the newspaper and NANA. It is clear, therefore, that it found the bootlegger charge to be in the 'private sector,' since it had been instructed that unless it so found it could not impose liability on NANA. It is possible that having made this determination, it then concluded that the charge was true but 'unjustified'-that is, that it had been published without a 'lawful occasion.' In any event, under the trial judge's instructions it was also free to return a money verdict if it found that the publication was false and had not been made 'in good faith,' for a 'justifiable purpose,' and with a 'belief founded on reasonable grounds of the truth of the matter published.' Since this standard is far less stringent than that of knowing falsehood or reckless disregard of the truth, the judgment must be reversed unless it can be shown that the New York Times rule is not applicable because of the nature of the libel in question. Cf. Ocala Star-Banner Co. v. Damron, 401 U.S. 295, 91 S.Ct. 628, 28 L.Ed.2d 57.

The respondent argues that under New York Times a plaintiff has a special burden of proof only as to libels 'relating to official conduct,' that for a candidate 'official conduct' means 'conduct relevant to fitness for office,' and that the public-private issue is one of fact for the jury. In our view, however, the sylogistic manipulation of distinctions between 'private sectors' and 'public sectors,' or matters of fact and matters of law, is of little utility in resolving questions of First Amendment protection.

In Garrison v. Louisiana, supra, we reversed a conviction for criminal libel of a man who had charged that a group of state court judges were inefficient, took excessive vacations, opposed official investigations of vice, and were possibly subject to 'racketeer influences.' The Louisiana Supreme Court had held that these statements were not 'criticisms * *  * of the manner in which any one of the eight judges conducted his court when in session, but rather were accusations of crime' and 'personal attacks upon the integrity and honesty' of the judges. This Court rejected the proposed distinction:

'Of course, any criticism of the manner in which a public     official performs his duties will tend to affect his private,      as well as his public, reputation. The New York Times rule is     not rendered inapplicable merely because an official's      private reputation, as well as his public reputation, is      harmed. The public-official rule protects the paramount     public interest in a free flow of information to the people      concerning public officials, their servants. To this end,     anything which might touch on an official's fitness for      office is relevant. Few personal attributes are more germane     to fitness for office than dishonesty, malfeasance, or      improper motivation, even though these characteristics may also affect the official's private      character.' 379 U.S., at 76-77, 85 S.Ct., at 217.

Cf. Ocala Star-Banner Co. v. Damron, supra.

The considerations that led us thus to reformulate the 'official conduct' rule of New York Times in terms of 'anything which might touch on an official's fitness for office' apply with special force to the case of the candidate. Indeed, whatever vitality the 'official conduct' concept may retain with regard to occupants of public office, cf. Garrison, supra, 379 U.S., at 72 n. 8, 85 S.Ct., at 215, it is clearly of little applicability in the context of an election campaign. The principal activity of a candidate in our political system, his 'office,' so to speak, consists in putting before the voters every conceivable aspect of his public and private life that he thinks may lead the electorate to gain a good impression of him. A candidate who, for example, seeks to further his cause through the prominent display of his wife and children can hardly argue that his qualities as a husband or father remain of 'purely private' concern. And the candidate who vaunts his spotless record and sterling integrity cannot convincingly cry 'Foul!' when an opponent or an industrious reporter attempts to demonstrate the contrary. Any test adequate to safeguard First Amendment guarantees in this area must go far beyond the customary meaning of the phrase 'official conduct.' Given the realities of our political life, it is by no means easy to see what statements about a candidate might be altogether without relevance to his fitness for the office he seeks. The clash of reputations is the staple of election campaigns, and damage to reputation is, of course, the essence of libel. But whether there remains some exiguous area of defamation against which a candidate may have full recourse is a question we need not decide in this case. The trial judge presented the issue to the jury in the form of the question: 'Is it more probable than otherwise that the publication that the plaintiff was a former small-time bootlegger was a public affair on a par with official conduct of public officials?' This instruction, and the others like it, left the jury far more leeway to act as censors than is consistent with the protection of the First and Fourteenth Amendments in the setting of a political campaign.

The application of the traditional concepts of tort law to the conduct of a political campaign is bound to raise dangers for freedom of speech and of the press. The reasonable-man standard of liability, for example, serves admirably the essential function of imposing an objective and socially acceptable limit on the freedom of an individual to act with relation to others. But under our system of government, we have chosen to afford protection even to 'opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death,' Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 630, 40 S.Ct. 17, 22, 63 L.Ed. 1173 (Holmes, J., dissenting). A community that imposed legal liability on all statements in a political campaign deemed 'unreasonable' by a jury would have abandoned the First Amendment as we know it. Likewise, a 'preponderance of the evidence' burden of proof plays an indispensable role in the control of private negligence. But we have recognized that in the realm of political belief 'the tenets of one man may seem the rankest error to his neighbor,' and that the advocates whom we protect may resort to 'exaggeration, to vilification of men who have been, or are, prominent in church or state, and even to false statement,' Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 310, 60 S.Ct. 900, 906, 84 L.Ed. 1213. It is simply inconsistent with this commitment to permit the imposition of liability for political speech that 'more probably than otherwise' in the opinion of the jury 'would not touch upon or be relevant' to a candidate's fitness for office. Cf. Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513, 525-526, 78 S.Ct. 1332, 1341-1342, 2 L.Ed.2d 1460; Smith v. California, 361 U.S. 147, 80 S.Ct. 215, 4 L.Ed.2d 205.

It is perhaps unavoidable that in the area of tension between the Constitution and the various state laws of defamation there will be some uncertainty as to what publications are and what are not protected. The mental element of 'knowing or reckless disregard' required under the New York Times test, for example, is not always easy of ascertainment. 'Inevitably its outer limits will be marked out through case-by-case adjudication, as is true with so many legal standards for judging concrete cases, whether the standard is provided by the Constitution, statutes, or case law.' St. Amant v. Thompson, 390 U.S. 727, 730-731, 88 S.Ct. 1323, 1325, 20 L.Ed.2d 262. But there is a major, and in this case decisive, difference between liability based on a standard of care, and liability based on a judgment of the 'relevance' of a past incident of criminal conduct to an official's or a candidate's fitness for office. A standard of care 'can be neutral with respect to content of the speech involved, free of historical taint, and adjusted to strike a fair balance between the interests of the community in free circulation of information and those of individuals in seeking recompense for harm done by the circulation of defamatory falsehood.' Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, supra, 388 U.S., at 153, 87 S.Ct., at 1990 (opinion of Harlan, J.). A standard of 'relevance,' on the other hand, especially such a standard applied by a jury under the preponderance-of-the-evidence test, is unlikely to be neutral with respect to the content of speech and holds a real danger of becoming an instrument for the suppression of those 'vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks.' New York Times, supra, 376 U.S., at 270, 84 S.Ct., at 721, which must be protected if the guarantees of the First and Fourteenth Amendments are to prevail.

We therefore hold as a matter of constitutional law that a charge of criminal conduct, no matter how remote in time or place, can never be irrelevant to an official's or a candidate's fitness for office for purposes of application of the 'knowing falsehood or reckless disregard' rule of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. Since the jury in this case was permitted to make its own unguided determination that the charge of prior criminal activity was not 'relevant,' and that the New York Times standard was thus inapplicable, the judgment must be reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Judgment reversed and case remanded.

Separate opinion of Mr. Justice BLACK, with whom Mr. Justice DOUGLAS joins.