Down Goes The Gray Lady: The New York Times Suffers First Defamation Loss in Fifty Years
No winning streak lasts forever.
For over fifty years, The New York Times successfully defended every defamation suit filed against it. This half-century shutout was the most impressive run in media law history. Ironically, it was an NCAA walk-on who felled the goliath in court - to the tune of $9.2 million in damages.
Foul Play
On January 15, 2023, former University of Alabama Men’s Basketball player Darius Miles was involved in a fatal shootout in Tuscaloosa. At the scene were multiple teammates, including current NBA star Brandon Miller.
On the night of the shooting, Miller had dropped Miles off at a sports bar then went to another restaurant to hang out with then-teammate Kai Spears. At 1:38 am, Miles texted: “I need my joint” (gun) and that someone was “fakin” (threatening) him. Miller drove back to the sports bar to deliver the gun, with team manager Cooper Lee as a passenger.
On March 15, 2023, the Times erroneously reported that Spears was the passenger in Miller’s car. After the article was published, Alabama’s athletic director and Spears’s father each denied that Spears was present at the scene. The paper added their denials, but did not issue a retraction. Spears filed suit.
Replay Review
The Times argued that, mistaken identity aside, it is not inherently defamatory to be at the scene of a crime. However, the judge and jury ultimately agreed that the article cast damaging aspersions on Spears by falsely putting him in proximity to a murder weapon.
Therefore the Times’s remaining firewall was lack of fault. Defamation, like any other personal injury tort, requires blameworthiness. Often, in high-profile defamation cases, the standard applied is “actual malice.” Public official or public figure plaintiffs must prove the defendant knew better. Honest mistakes are protected, even despite sloppiness or carelessness. Some states, like New York, automatically apply this heightened standard if the article in question involves an issue of public concern, like gun violence.
Not so for Spears, whose walk-on status fell well short of the celebrity required to qualify as a public figure. He only needed to prove that the Times was negligent; i.e. objectively unreasonable in light of the circumstances.
Play By Play
In identifying Spears, Times reporter Billy Witz relied on two anonymous sources, referred to as "Source A" and “Source B” throughout the trial. Both have been described as high level insiders. “A” had provided the Times with direct access to photos, surveillance video, and other material.
Witz testified that “B” informed him there was a passenger in Miller’s car. Then
"A” identified the passenger as Spears. “B,” in turn, responded: "I can tell you it's a white guy on the basketball team, I just don't remember his name."
Prior to identifying Spears as the passenger, Witz:
Approached Spears and Miller in person and asked if Spears had been in the star forward's car at the time of the shooting. They declined to comment.
Called Spears’s father. The elder Spears did not return Witz’s call. He testified that he did not view the request as urgent because his son had already been cleared of any involvement.
Once the article ran, Spears and Alabama issued public denials. The Times included the denials but did not retract the story.
No Slam Dunk
Witz’s sources were credible and he attempted to get Spears’s side of the story in a variety of ways. So while its understandable that the University and Spears adopted a “no-comment” policy in the aftermath of the shooting, they can’t say the reporter didn’t make a good-faith effort to get the story right in the first instance.
Things get a little murkier once they decided to issue denials. The $9.2 million dollar question is whether the Times should have retracted at that point. When a denial is just that - a bare refutation without any offer of corroboration - most journalists opt to juxtapose it against the allegation. Readers can reach their own conclusions.
Spears attached an affidavit of a teammate to his Complaint, which provided an alibi for his whereabouts at the time of the shooting. Had that alibi been offered to - and ignored by - the Times, this would have been an easy case.
Cinderella Story
Was the paper justified in continuing to rely on “A” and “B” (who apparently expressed doubt about Spears’s involvement after the initial publication) post-denial?
Reasonable minds may disagree, but a truly unfortunate case of mistaken identity plus plaintiff’s home court advantage were the perfect recipe for an upset.