In Melchiorre v. Peerless Publications, Inc., et al., Montgomery, McCracken, Walker & Rhoads, LLP obtained a summary judgment on behalf of a newspaper defendant after a ruling that plaintiffs were involuntary limited purpose public figures. The case arose out of more than 35 articles and editorials over a nine-month period relating to the business relationship of plaintiff Peter Melchiorre and his construction company with a local municipality for which plaintiffs performed contract work.
In the context of charges by a public official that plain-tiffs had benefited during the prior administration from political favoritism and no-bid contracts as a result of Melchiorre’s friendships with certain public officials, the newspaper published detailed analyses of all of the contracts performed over the previous nine years, as well as issues raised during an ongoing construction project. Plaintiffs claimed that the articles and editorials defamed them through statements or implications suggesting that they were corrupt or dishonest.
The challenge in this case was the voluminous record produced in discovery, consisting of more than 30 depositions and thousands of documents. Although the record strongly supported the truth of the publications and there were numerous other applicable common law and constitutional defenses, it seemed unlikely that a busy judge would be willing to wade through the massive record and extensive legal analysis to grant summary judgment.
To overcome this problem, we devised a strategy to permit the court to grant summary judgment on narrow grounds without waiving the newspaper’s right toassert all available defenses. The strategy required persuading the court to enter a case management order that would permit serial summary judgment motions on one issue at a time. Counsel persuaded the judge that the public figure and actual malice determinations could dispose of the entire case without requiring the court to analyze the entire factual record to weigh the accuracy of each and every statement in all of the articles and editorials at issue.
Once the court agreed to the case management approach, we filed a motion for the determination of plaintiffs’ public figure status, which resulted in a ruling that plaintiff was a limited purpose public figure, although an involuntary one. This ruling, of course, shifted the burden to plaintiffs to come forward with evidence of actual malice. Plaintiffs responded by selecting a limited number of issues on which they believed they had a colorable argument. The court, however, was not persuaded and granted summary judgment for the defendant newspaper. There was no appeal. MMW&R partners Joyce S. Meyers and Michael D. Epstein defended the case on behalf of the newspaper.
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