Georgia high court backs hog farmer on public-figure claim
By The Associated Press
11.30.02
ATLANTA — The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that an Albany businessman who claims he was libeled by a hog farmer is a public figure, meaning he must prove the farmer acted recklessly in posting claims on the Internet.
In a 4-to-3 decision on Nov. 26, the court held that free-speech principles protecting newspapers and broadcast media also apply to the Web.
Bruce Mathis was sued after he vented his frustrations against Thomas C. Cannon, whose company was hired to haul solid waste to a highly controversial recycling facility in Crisp County.
On Nov. 4, 1999, sitting at his home computer and using a pseudonym, Mathis called Cannon a "thief" and a "crook" on a message board.
Cannon said the comments were false and without foundation. He filed a defamation lawsuit seeking $1 million in punitive damages.
The Supreme Court said Cannon is a "limited purpose public figure" because of his high-profile involvement in the landfill controversy. The legal designation requires Cannon to prove Mathis published the accusatory statements knowing they were false or acted recklessly when posting them.
A trial judge must now weigh that determination when deciding whether the case should go to a jury. If the judge allows the case to proceed, Cannon would not be entitled to punitive damages because he failed to ask for a retraction before filing his lawsuit, a requirement under state law, the Supreme Court decided.
The court was divided in opinion on the reaction that Mathis' three Internet messages could evoke.
Chief Justice Norman Fletcher wrote that they could not be interpreted as actual facts.
"Any person reading the postings," Fletcher wrote, "would interpret them as the late night rhetorical outbursts of an angry and frustrated person opposed to the company's hauling of other people's garbage into the county."
Justice Carol Hunstein, joined by Justices George Carley and Harris Hines, dissented. She said reasonable readers would consider the postings "assertions of fact constituting malicious and personal attacks on Cannon's character and reputation."