Wash. appeals court will review P-I defamation case

The Washington state appellate court is planning to review an odd defamation case against the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in which the plaintiff does not dispute the accuracy of the report but claims it libeled him anyway, The News Tribune of Tacoma reports.

Warren Yeakey reportedly sued the Post-Intelligencer in November, claiming a package of articles published two years earlier had defamed him. The newspaper had written about the death of a Bellevue man during a crane accident; Yeakey had been operating the construction crane. Yeakey doesn’t dispute the accuracy of the articles but bases his defamation claim on the allegation the stories implied he caused the accident, according to The News Tribune.

The Post-Intelligencer, which ceased its print publication earlier this year, twice asked the trial court to dismiss the case. Those rulings were appealed. Last week a commissioner for the appellate court  division in Tacoma issued an 11-page order announcing the court would consider the case and saying "the trial court appears to have committed obvious error," The News Tribune reported.