Legal News

A Thick-Skinned Society: Florida High Court Says No to False Light

By Dan Slater

Is false light, that great bar exam chestnut, really just an effort to impose a thin-skin standard on thick-skinned society? Florida’s high court apparently thinks so. Yesterday, it refused to recognize false light — a tort that allows a plaintiff to sue over a publication that’s true but highly offensive — as a cause of action.

Back in March we posted on the case when the arguments took place. A quick refresher: In 2003, a jury awarded $18-million to Joe Anderson after the Pensacola News Journal published a series of stories about environmental issues surrounding the paving company he founded. One story mentioned that while on probation for mail fraud in 1988, Anderson shot and killed his wife in a Dixie County hunting accident, just days after he filed for divorce — which was true. But lawyers for Anderson argued that although accurate, information inserted into the middle of a story about the paving company inflicted emotional distress on Anderson by portraying him as his wife’s killer.

At oral arguments, justices were skeptical. “Isn’t the false light standard awfully vague for the courts and juries to apply with precision?” asked Justice Harry Lee Anstead. “Generally speaking we’ve been a society that’s supposed to have a thick skin, and this is a thin-skinned standard.”

After yesterday’s ruling, which upheld a ruling by Florida’s 1st District Court of Appeal overturning the Anderson verdict, Anderson said in a statement: “Today the Court shut the courthouse door to every Floridian who is falsely accused by a newspaper when they publish words that are literally true but carefully crafted to include thinly veiled accusations of wrongful conduct. . .” Here’s a report from the St. Petersburg Times.

In a separate ruling, the court also rejected a similar ruling in a lawsuit against the group Jews for Jesus. A Palm Beach County woman alleged that the group’s newsletters made it appear she was a convert to Christianity.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on October 24, 2008 (boomark / email).