This story appeared today in the New York Times: "Judge Dismisses Trump's Suit Against the Wall Street Journal." The following is quoted from that article:
A federal judge on Monday dismissed President Trump's $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the publisher of The Wall Street Journal over its report of his lewd birthday greeting to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Judge Darrin Gayles in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida said in his decision that Mr. Trump had not "plausibly alleged" that The Journal published the article with "actual malice," a legal standard meaning that it knew what it was publishing was false or had acted with reckless disregard as to its accuracy.
In the evolution of the laws that protect freedom of the press in this country, there have been many significant milestones. One of them, as has oft been recounted on Gossips, has a Hudson connection.
In 1803, Harry Croswell, who, under the nom de plume Robert Rusticoat, wrote and published a newspaper here in Hudson called The Wasp, was indicted for "seditious libel" for reporting that Thomas Jefferson had paid a Washington newspaper publisher to run articles in his paper that were hostile to Jefferson's political opponents. At Croswell's trial here in Columbia County, a request to introduce the truth of the story as a defense was denied, and Croswell was found guilty. Croswell appealed the decision, and in his second trial, in New York Supreme Court, he was represented by Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton argued that the press had the right to print the truth, "with good motives or for justifiable ends," even of the truth reflected badly on "the government, magistracy or individuals." In 1805, Hamilton's argument that reporting the truth is not libel was incorporated into law.
An even earlier event in the history of freedom of the press in America is the trial of John Peter Zenger. In 1735, Zenger was tried for libel after he published opinions critical of the colonial governor, William Cosby, in his newspaper, the New York Weekly Journal.
On Wednesday, April 15, Zenger's trial, in which he was acquitted, will be reenacted at the James T. Foley U.S. Courthouse in Albany. The reenactment begins at 5:30 p.m. The courthouse is located at 445 Broadway. For more information, click here.
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How extraordinary to hear that Columbia County played such an important role in the evolution of libel law. Ironically, however, in the Trump case, the court chose not to rule on the WSJ motion to dismiss based on the grounds of truth. It relied on a narrower ground, leaving Trump an opportunity to plead again.
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