Reynolds v. Pegler: 1954

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Reynolds v. Pegler: 1954

Plaintiff: Quentin Reynolds
Defendants: Westbrook Pegler, The Hearst Corporation, and Hearst Consolidated Publications
Plaintiff Claims: That a certain column published by the defendants on November 29, 1949 libeled the plaintiff
Chief Defense Lawyer: Charles Henry
Chief Lawyers for Plaintiff: Walter S. Beck, Paul Martinson, and Louis Nizer
Judge: Edward Weinfeld
Place: New York, New York
Dates of Trial: May 10-July 22, 1954
Verdict: Against all defendants: Reynolds awarded $1 in compensatory damages and $175,000 in punitive damages

SIGNIFICANCE: The lopsided award of a huge amount of punitive damages in connection with an award of only nominal compensatory damages was the largest in history at the time. The decision sent a clear signal to the publishing industry that it would be held accountable for the libelous acts of its writers and reporters.

William Randolph Hearst, the publishing magnate, built an empire by publishing newspapers that had stories the public wanted to read. Hearst made sure that his papers had the best editors, writers and reporters money could buy. One of Hearst's favorite writers was Westbrook Pegler, who wrote articles for the King Features Syndicate of The Hearst Corporation, which in turn sold the articles to other Hearst papers. In particular, King Features sold Pegler articles to the New York Journal-American, a New York City newspaper owned by Hearst Consolidated Publications.

Hearst died in 1945, nearly 90 years old, but Pegler remained with the Hearst organization. Pegler's articles could be very vindictive and biting, and in 1949 Pegler was accused of using his writing ability to hurt an old friend. On November 20, 1949, a writer for the New York Herald Tribune Book Review named Quentin Reynolds wrote a review of Dale Kramer's book The Heywood Broun His Friends Recall. Heywood Broun, himself a writer, had once been a friend of Pegler but, during the 1930s, the two men had a falling-out. In 1939, Pegler wrote a scathing attack on Broun's works. According to Kramer, Broun was so upset by Pegler's attack that Broun was unable to recover from a minor illness and died.

Despite the fact that the events described in Kramer's book were over 10 years old, Pegler took offense at Reynolds' review. On November 29, 1949 Pegler's article, "On Heywood Broun and Quentin Reynolds," was published in the Journal-American. Pegler's article had little to do with any critique of Reynolds' review, and was instead a wholesale assassination of Reynolds' character. Without any substantiation, Pegler said: that Reynolds and his girlfriend made a habit of appearing nude in public; that on the way to Heywood Broun's funeral Reynolds had proposed marriage to the widow, Connie Broun; that Reynolds had been a profiteer during World War II; that while working as a war correspondent in London, Reynolds had been a coward; and so forth. Pegler also called Reynolds a degenerate who associated with communists, blacks and others Pegler regarded as undesirables.

Reynolds Sues for Libel

After the publication of Pegler's article, Reynolds sued Pegler, The Hearst Corporation and Hearst Consolidated Publications for libel. Reynolds' lawyers were Walter S. Beck, Paul Martinson, and Louis Nizer. The defendants' chief lawyer was Charles Henry, and the judge was Edward Weinfeld. The trial began on May 10, 1954.

Aware that truth was a defense to the charge of libel, Nizer showed that Pegler's allegations in the article could not possibly be true. Nizer presented witnesses who testified that Reynolds could not have proposed to Connie Broun because she had been asleep and in the company of others all the way to the funeral, that Reynolds had not been a war profiteer, that Reynolds' war record in fact showed considerable heroism rather than cowardice, and so on. Weinfeld was convinced, and he instructed the jury that they were to take it as a given that Pegler's article was libelous:

[T]hat column read in its entirety, I charge you as a matter of law, is defamatory.

Henry tried his best to present plausible justifications for Pegler's accusations, but his excuses came across sounding rather thin. For example, Henry tried to explain away Pegler's charge that Reynolds had proposed to Connie Broun as possibly referring to the same high-minded spirit as Moses's ancient laws, which in biblical times placed:

… upon a brother the duty of proposing to his dead brother's widow.

The jury was not convinced. On July 22, 1954, the jurors returned a guilty verdict against all three defendants. Given the nature of Pegler's article and Weinfeld's instructions, this verdict was not surprising. What was surprising, however, was the amount of damages the jury awarded to Reynolds, which were of two types. The first type was the compensatory damages, which represented compensation to Reynolds for the damage, emotional and otherwise, caused by Pegler's vicious public attack on his character. As is common in such cases, the dollar value of the damage done was hard to determine and so the jury gave a nominal award of just one dollar. The second type of damages was punitive, which represented the punishment that the jury saw fit to impose on the defendants for having published the article.

The amount of punitive damages rocked the publishing industry, for at the time it was the largest award of its kind in American history. The jury awarded Reynolds $100,000 against Pegler, $50,000 against The Hearst Corporation, and $25,000 against Hearst Consolidated Publications, for a total of $175,000 in punitive damages. Although the size of the award was unprecedented, it was financially a drop in the bucket to the massive Hearst organization. The disturbing part, however, was that publishers could now be held financially liable for the libels and other unlawful acts of their writers. The defendants promptly appealed.

On February 16-17, 1955, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard the parties' arguments. The court issued its decision on June 7 of the same year. The court not only upheld the verdict against Pegler and the other defendants, but it reaffirmed the principle that publishers could be held accountable for the acts of their writers:

The mere fact that there was no proof of personal ill-will or animosity on the part of any of the corporate executives toward plaintiff does not preclude an award of punitive damages. Malice may be inferred from the very violence and vituperation apparent upon the face of the libel itself, especially where, as here, officers or employees of each corporate defendant had full opportunity to and were under a duty to exercise editorial supervision for purposes of revision, but permitted the publication of the column without investigation, delay or any alteration whatever of its contents. The jury may well have found on this evidence a wanton or reckless indifference to plaintiff's rights.

Thus, the court was telling the Hearst companies in particular and the publishing industry in general that if writers like Pegler wrote vicious and personal articles, the publishers would be held liable if they did not exercise proper editorial control over potentially defamatory material. The defendants exercised their final avenue of appeal, namely a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court, which was denied on October 10, 1955.

The case of Reynolds v. Pegler, with its stupendous award of punitive damages in relation to the nominal compensatory damages, sent a danger signal throughout the publishing industry. This new awareness of potential liability changed forever the relationship between publishers, writers, and reporters. From this date forward, publishers and editors would take greater care to make sure that their publications were accurate and nondefamatory.

—Stephen G. Christianson