Lawrence v. Bauer Publishing & Printing

Lawrence v. Bauer Publishing & Printing

Opinion

 [*454]  [**470]   This litigation results from the publication in the Rahway News-Record of two articles on the topic of a petition drive in the City of Rahway. Plaintiffs seek damages based on the alleged defamatory nature of both articles. Defendants, the newspaper's publisher, editor and a reporter, assert the defense of truth and the qualified First Amendment privilege [***2]  protecting newspapers from liability for defamatory statements concerning public figures. The trial court ruled that plaintiff Lawrence was a public figure as set forth in Gertz v. Welch, 418 U.S. 323, 94 S.Ct. 2997, 41 L.Ed.2d 789 (1974), and dismissed Lawrence's claim because of insufficient evidence of defendants' actual  [*455]  malice. The jury returned a verdict in favor of plaintiff Simpson. Lawrence's post-trial motion for a new trial was granted. The Appellate Division affirmed the judgment in favor of Simpson and the order granting Lawrence a new trial. 176 N.J. Super. 378 (1981).

We agree with so much of the determination below as holds both articles to be defamatory  [**471]  as a matter of law. However, we find both plaintiffs to be public figures for the purposes of this controversy. Therefore, since there is no evidence of actual malice, we vacate the order awarding plaintiff Lawrence a new trial and reverse the judgment in favor of plaintiff Simpson.

In 1974 the Rahway Taxpayers Association led by plaintiffs Alonzo Lawrence, the group's president, and James Simpson, its secretary-treasurer, conducted a campaign in opposition to [***3]  a municipal appropriation for the construction of a new firehouse. The Association, a citizens group made up of Rahway taxpayers, circulated petitions among Rahway's registered voters in an attempt to force a public referendum on the appropriation issue. Petitions containing over 5,000 signatures were submitted by plaintiffs to the Rahway City Clerk in late December 1974.

On or about January 7, 1975 the Rahway News Record received a telephone call from City Business Administrator Joseph Hartnett, a sometime source of news concerning City affairs. Hartnett spoke first to the editor, defendant Kurt Bauer, and then to reporter Patsy Bontempo, who had been assigned to cover the controversy surrounding the firehouse appropriation. Although the substance of Hartnett's conversations with Bauer and Bontempo is disputed, the three parties to the conversations agree that Hartnett said at least this: that there were "irregularities" in some of the signatures on the petitions filed by the Association; that the City Prosecutor, Theodore Romankow, was conducting an investigation of the petitions to determine whether there were incidents of forgery or false swearing in connection  [*456]   [***4]  with the signatures; and that included in the petitions being investigated were those containing signatures witnessed personally by Lawrence and Simpson.

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