Libel: Lose One, Win One

The caption in the April 12, 1960, New York Times, beneath a picture of the Birmingham, Ala., police commissioner, was hardly calculated to please the subject. "Police Commissioner Eugene Connor," it read, "was elected on a race hate platform." Other references to Connor, in Timesman Harrison Salisbury's accompanying two-part story on race tensions in Birmingham, were no more flattering. "Bull" Connor sued the Times for $400,000 in damages, and was joined in his action by six other Alabama officials. Last week in Birmingham, four years after publication of the Times story, a federal-district-court jury awarded Connor $40,000.

For the Times, the amount and nature of the award, as welt as the Connor case itself, had special significance. In 1961, on the ground that it did no business in Alabama and therefore could not be sued there, the paper got all seven cases tossed out of court—only to have the decision reversed on appeal. The six other suits have since been dismissed; unlike Connor, none of the other officials were named in the Salis bury stories.

Then last spring, in successfully appealing another libel judgment to the U.S. Supreme Court,* the Times won a landmark decision (TIME, March 20, 1964). The Supreme Court ruled, in effect, that unless malice was proved, the conduct of public officials was fair game for criticism, even if the criticism was unwarranted or untrue.

Last week's jury, apparently convinced that the Times had acted without malice, awarded Bull Connor nothing in punitive damages. But despite the Supreme Court dictum that, short of malice, just about anything goes in criticism of public officials, the jury awarded Connor $40,000 compensatory damages for any injury done his reputation. Before he collects Connor may have to wait for a Supreme Court ruling.

Even while losing the Connor case, the Times won another last week. A New York State supreme court jury decided in favor of the Times in a $1,000,000 libel suit brought by the J. Radley Metzger company, a textile firm. The suit was based on a 1958 Times editorial accusing the company of making "sweetheart contracts," defined in the editorial as "those which benefit racketeering union officials and employers." The jury agreed that however harsh the comment, the Times had acted without malice.