Court of Appeals Rules for City Paper in Libel Case
Quoting William Carlos Williams, Maryland’s highest court has upheld lower courts’ dismissals of a four-year-old libel suit filed against City Paper. “‘It is not what you say that matters but the manner in which you say it,’” Judge Glenn T. Harrell wrote in the Maryland Court of Appeals opinion, which was filed today. “There lies the secret of the ages.”
Nicholas A. Piscatelli, a developer and the owner of the Redwood Trust, an early 2000s nightclub located in the iconic bank building on Redwood Street, sued City Paper in December 2007 over articles written by Senior Staff Writer Van Smith in 2006 and 2007 . The stories delved into the 2003 murder of Jason Convertino and Sean Wisniewski, and the case Baltimore Police made against Anthony Jerome Miller, who was convicted and is serving two consecutive 30-year prison terms for the double homicide.
Piscatelli had been Convertino’s boss, and Convertino was ready to leave Redwood Trust for a similar position at Bohager’s, a rival club, just before he was killed. According to court records, Convertino’s mother, Pam Morgan, claimed to have been visited in New York by a mysterious stranger shortly after the murders. The stranger allegedly told her that Piscatelli was behind the murders but “covered his tracks.” Including that fact in the stories, and confirming the incident with Morgan, constituted defamation and abuse of the reporter’s privilege, Piscatelli claimed.
Not so, said a succession of Maryland judges. Piscatelli’s case was first dismissed by the circuit court on Feb. 17, 2009. He appealed to the Court of Special Appeals, which ruled against him again last year. Piscatelli then appealed to the state’s highest court, which made its decision along the same lines. (pdf of decision).
Bottom line: There was nothing false in City Paper’s stories—or, at least, Piscatelli did not show evidence that anything in the stories was materially false. Because you can’t defame someone with the truth, Piscatelli’s defamation suit cannot stand.
As the headnote to the decision states:
The fair reporting privilege applies to reports about documents in a public court case file and summaries of transcripts of trial testimony, so long as the reporter does not abuse the privilege; i.e., the reports are a fair and accurate representation of the source material.
“Although perhaps an unflattering account of Piscatelli’s relationship with Convertino, Respondents’ report was an accurate, fair account of Piscatelli’s testimony. Piscatelli failed to advance any facts to demonstrate otherwise,” Harrell concluded. “There was no triable issue for a jury.”
