Roy Moore v. Cuy Cecile, et al.

Birmingham, Alabama, personal injury lawyers represented the Plaintiff who sued on a defamation theory.

Reported by Kent Morlan

In 2017, Roy Moore ran as the Republican nominee in a
special election to fill an open seat for one of Alabama’s United
States senators. In the final weeks before the election, multiple
news outlets reported that several women had accused Moore of
inappropriate sexual conduct with them when they were young.
Senate Majority PAC (“SMP”) grabbed onto the news reports and
ran a campaign ad that stated, among other things, in separate
individual frames that (1) “‘Moore was actually banned from the
Gadsden Mall . . . for soliciting sex from young girls,’” and
(2) “[o]ne he approached ‘was 14 and working as Santa’s helper.’”
SMP ran the ad hundreds of times, and Moore eventually lost the
election.
Moore sued SMP for defamation and false-light invasion of
privacy under Alabama law, arguing in relevant part that the two
statements above when read together created the false defamatory
implication that he had solicited the 14-year-old girl working as
Santa’s helper for sex.1 Those two claims proceeded to a jury trial.

* * *

However, because the jury verdict in this case concerns a
defamation claim by a public figure, we also have a unique
constitutional duty in reviewing this verdict. Specifically, the
Supreme Court has established a constitutional rule, based on the
First Amendment, requiring a public-figure plaintiff to establish
actual malice by the defendant by clear and convincing evidence in
order for the public figure to succeed on his defamation claim.12 See
N.Y. Times, 376 U.S. at 279–80. In order to ensure that the actual
malice standard has been met, the Supreme Court has mandated
that, in defamation cases brought by public figures, appellate courts
have a constitutional duty to “make an independent examination
of the whole record,” and “determine whether the record
establishes actual malice with convincing clarity” so that we may
be “assure[d] . . . that the judgment . . . does not constitute a
forbidden intrusion on the field of free expression.” Bose Corp. v.
Consumers Union of U.S., Inc., 466 U.S. 485, 508, 514 (1984)
(quotations omitted). Importantly, this “rule of independent
review assigns to judges a constitutional responsibility that cannot
be delegated to the trier of fact, whether the factfinding function
be performed in the particular case by a jury or by a trial judge.”
Id. at 501 (conducting independent review of whether there was
sufficient clear and convincing evidence of actual malice following
a bench trial); Harte-Hanks Commc’ns, Inc. v. Connaughton, 491 U.S.
657, 688–93 (1989) (conducting an independent review of whether
the constitutional actual malice standard had been established by
clear and convincing evidence in a jury trial); see also Levan v. Cap.
Cities/ABC, Inc., 190 F.3d 1230, 1239, 1239–44 (11th Cir. 1999)
(conducting independent review of whether the evidence was
sufficient to support the jury’s finding of actual malice). This
requirement of independent appellate review is a rule of federal
constitutional law which “reflects a deeply held conviction that
judges . . . must exercise such review in order to preserve the
precious liberties established and ordained by the Constitution.”

The jury found SMP liable for defamation and false-light invasion
of privacy, and it awarded Moore $8.2 million in compensatory
damages.

Reversed