Re: Garden Design

**"Carol Wallace, Ph.D." gardenwriter@mindspring.com>**

Rich Pomerantz wrote:

> I am a lawyer, and one of the most clear and memorable phrases law 
> students remember is "In a liable suit, truth is an absolute defense". 
> Period. Malice or absence of it doesn't enter into the situation 
> except where you are talking about a public figure. And here you still 
> have it backwards also because you can say UNtruthful things about a 
> public figure, but still not be liable for libel so long as you have 
> an absence of malice. That's the way it works in the USA. That's how 
> the tabloids get away with their nonsense all the time. The few celebs 
> who sue & occasionally win have to prove the tabloid used malice in 
> printing the untruth about whatever scandalous material they printed. 
> Most don't sue, because the tabs can usually show they had a source, 
> or it wasn't malicious.

Truth is NOT an absolute defense - there are degrees of truth, for one 
thing, and if a misstatement that could be true in one sense is judged 
to have been taken differently by t he so-called average reader the 
truth defense may not hold. And in some states the defense is "Truth 
with good intent" - in other words the allegations were published 
because the public had the right to  be warned of the problem, rather 
than because the statements were motivated by grudges or anger.

And don't confuse malice and actual malice - which is reckless disregard 
for the truth, meaning the person making the statement had reason to 
doubt the truth of the statement but published it anyway. Just showing 
that a statement was made with ill will doesn't constitute actual malice 
- although it does interfere with the truth defense in states that have 
that requirement.
Carol

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