Roy Stewart Moore v. Senate Majority PAC, "SMP"

The First Amendment requires a public-figure defamation plaintiff to prove with “convincing clarity” that the defendant published a false statement with “actual malice.” New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 279-80 (1964). This Court requires appellate courts to conduct an independent de novo review for findings of actual malice. Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc., 466 U.S. 485 (1984), Harte-Hanks Communications, Inc. v. Connaughton, 491 U.S. 657, 688 (1989). But the Seventh Amendment commands that “no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.” A jury found the challenged message false under the applicable state-law standard and found that Senate Majority PAC published it with actual malice. The district court, applying Harte-Hanks, in a 104- page analysis of the record, found no clear error in the credibility determinations supporting the verdict and independently concluded that actual malice was established. The Eleventh Circuit reversed and rendered judgment for respondent without identifying any credibility determination as clearly erroneous. The questions presented are:

1. When independently reviewing a jury verdict on actual malice under Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc. or Harte-Hanks Communications, Inc., can a court of appeals substitute its own contrary findings concerning the defendant’s subjective knowledge or intent under the reexamination clause of the Seventh Amendment of the United States Constitution?

2. Whether, under New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), and Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., 501 U.S. 496 (1991), a public-figure plaintiff who proves that a publisher deliberately assembled accurate excerpts into a materially false defamatory message must separately prove a subjective intent to communicate the resulting implication, or whether the publisher’s knowledge of the source material and deliberate construction of the message are evaluated as evidence that it knew or recklessly disregarded the falsity of the message it published.

3. Alternatively, whether the Court should reconsider New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), and its progeny, to determine whether the First Amendment permits States to apply ordinary common-law rules to public-figure defamation claims without requiring proof of actual malice.