Actual malice

A former candidate for the Maine State Senate could not show that negative advertisements about him by an out-of-state Republican organization, unaffiliated with his opponent, contained false statements that were made intentionally or with reckless disregard for their falsity, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston (1st Cir.) ruled earlier this month.

The Indiana Court of Appeals reversed a lower court's decision ordering The Indianapolis Star to reveal the identity of an anonymous commenter who was sued for defamation for comments made on the newspaper’s website.

In the ruling, the court said it weighed the First Amendment rights of the anonymous commenter versus the possible harm caused by the allegedly derogatory statements the commenter made on the website against the former head of a non-profit organization who filed the defamation suit.

A federal judge dismissed a $5 million libel lawsuit by a former tax preparer against a Virginia television station that allegedly referred to him as “unscrupulous.”

Earlier this week the Georgia Supreme Court declined to review a lower court decision in the long-running libel case against The Atlanta Journal-Constitution filed by Richard Jewell, who was wrongfully accused of the 1996 Olympic Park bombing, and carried on by his family since his death in 2007.

Two sugar-cane plantation owners from the Dominican Republic must satisfy a higher standard reserved for public figures if they are to prevail in a libel suit against American filmmakers who made a documentary critical of the Caribbean nation's sugar industry, a federal court of appeals has ruled.