Miskovsky v. Oklahoma Publishing Co.

Background

A candidate in the 1978 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Oklahoma repeated accusations made by another candidate about a third person. A local publisher of two daily newspapers ran three news stories, an editorial, and an editorial cartoon sharply criticizing the repeating candidate. After a jury trial instructed under the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan standard of actual malice, the jury awarded $35,000 in actual damages and $965,000 in punitive damages, but the Supreme Court of Oklahoma reversed that judgment.

Reasoning

The Oklahoma court said several newspaper statements were opinions and therefore could not be false, applying language from prior U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Justice Rehnquist’s dissent explains the central question as whether the Oklahoma court treated that conclusion as required by the U.S. Constitution or merely as a matter of Oklahoma law. He argued that the common-law rules about defamatory opinion are complex and were not swept away by brief dicta in earlier federal cases, and he would have granted review to decide if the state court had gone too far in reading federal law into the state decision.

Real world impact

Because the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case, the Oklahoma reversal stands and the candidate’s large jury award does not take effect. The decision, as left in place, means these newspaper statements were treated as nonactionable opinion in this dispute and the publisher avoided liability.

Dissents or concurrances

Justice Rehnquist, joined by Justice White, dissented from the denial of review and would have granted certiorari to clarify whether state defamation law had been improperly pre-empted by federal First Amendment interpretations.