Date: 10-24-2001

Case Style: D.A.R.E. v. Rolling Stone

Case Number: 00-55939

Judge: Rymer

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

Plaintiff's Attorney: Louis R. Miller, Christensen, Miller, Fink, Jacobs, Glaser, Weil & Shapiro, LLP, Los Angeles, California, for the plaintiffs-appellants.

Defendant's Attorney: Elizabeth A. McNamara, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, New York, New York, for the defendants-appellees.

Description: D.A.R.E. America and Glenn A. Levant, its founder and President, brought suit against Rolling Stone Magazine for defamation arising out of an article entitled "Truth & D.A.R.E." and two Editor's Notes about the article and its author, Stephen Glass, published in July and August 1998. The district court granted Rolling Stone's motion for summary judgment in a published opinion. D.A.R.E. America v. Rolling Stone Magazine, 101 F. Supp. 2d 1270 (C.D. Cal. 2000). D.A.R.E. and Levant timely appeal.

They challenge the district court's failure to consider their objections to certain of Rolling Stone's evidentiary submisemployee of Rolling Stone, that the Editor's Notes were not defamatory republications of the article, that "Truth & D.A.R.E." was not published with actual malice, and that some of the facts in the article were substantially true.

The district court declined to consider the objections because they were not included with the opposition to sum-mary judgment. Id. at 1279 n.1. We do not need to decide whether this was correct, for even if the objections were timely, D.A.R.E. and Levant's brief on appeal does not argue how resolving them would have affected the outcome. A "bare assertion" of an issue "does not preserve a claim, partic-ularly when, as here, a host of other issues are presented for review." Greenwood v. Federal Aviation Admin. , 28 F.3d 971, 977 (9th Cir. 1994). In any event, there appears to be no sub-stantial merit to any of them.

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Click the case caption above for the full text of the Court's opinion.

Outcome: Beyond this, we agree with and adopt the well reasoned opinion of the district court on all issues but the discussion on retraction in Part VI (the fourth, fifth and sixth paragraphs), substantial truth (Part VII) and statements "of and concern-ing" D.A.R.E. and Levant (Part VIII). Part VIII is not before us on appeal; and it is unnecessary to reach the issue of what effect (if any) failure to retract might have, or whether certain of the allegedly defamatory statements are substantially true, given our conclusion that Glass was not a Rolling Stone employee, the article was not published by Rolling Stone with actual malice, and the Editor's Notes are not libelous per se.

Affirmed.

Plaintiff's Experts: Unknown

Defendant's Experts: Unknown

Comments: None