Famous Libel Trials Trivia Quiz

Answer: John Adams

Under the Sedition Act, the John Adams administration arrested 25 newspaper editors and forced their newspapers to shut down. After Thomas Jefferson took office in 1801, he pardoned all of those who had been convicted under the Sedition Act, and Congress provided that all fines paid were to be returned with interest.

Answer: James Fenimore Cooper

Cooper constantly feuded with Whig newspapers who criticized his work and his views. Cooper won eleven of the eighteen cases, leading New York state to change its libel laws to make suits like this harder to win.

Answer: Oscar Wilde

The counsel for the Marquess was prepared to present a parade of young men with whom Wilde had been intimate. Faced with this mountain of evidence, Wilde dismissed his suit, and was arrested by the authorities that very day. He was convicted and served two years in prison.

Answer: 54

Annie Oakley spent six years of her life prosecuting the various libel suits she had filed. Although she prevailed in almost all of them, she lost money when her expenses and lost wages are taken into account.

Answer: that Roosevelt got drunk frequently

The defendant, George Newett, was so impressed by Roosevelt's witnesses that after five days of trial he gave up and admitted that he was wrong. Roosevelt said that being vindicated was all he had wanted, and he asked for the lowest possible monetary award, which turned out to be six cents.

Answer: Whittaker Chambers

Chambers' allegations against Hiss were initially made in testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and as such were privileged and he could not be sued. Hiss challenged Chambers to repeat the charges in public, and when he did, Hiss sued.

Hiss should have left well enough alone, as additional information came out during the pre-trial discovery phase of the lawsuit, and Hiss ended up being indicted for perjury. He was convicted and served 44 months in prison.

Answer: actual malice

Actual malice was defined by the court as knowledge that the item was false, or a reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity. Three members of the court wanted to go even further, and hold that a public official can *never* sue for being criticized for how he performs his official duties.

The majority did not go this far, but still their ruling made it harder for public figures to prevail in a lawsuit, and gave news organizations some much-needed protection from being harassed by libel suits.

Answer: CBS

Westmoreland dismissed his case in February of 1985, after four months of trial. Two factors influenced his decision. First, the trial was going badly, with evidence showing that the CBS story was true and that there had in fact been a cover-up. Second, a similar suit brought by Israel's Ariel Sharon against Time magazine had just ended in a jury verdict against Sharon. Had Westmoreland persevered and allowed the case to go to the jury, he might have been ordered to pay CBS's attorney fees, which would have been huge in a case of this magnitude.

Answer: public drunkenness

On the witness stand Burnett tearfully recounted growing up dealing with her parents' alcoholism, and how that experience left her particularly sensitive to this false allegation of her behavior in a Washington restaurant.

The jury awarded Burnett $300,000 in compensatory damages and $1.3 million in punitive damages, which the trial judge reduced to $50,000 in compensatory damages and $750,000 in punitive damages. The Enquirer appealed, with the punitive damages award being the main issue on appeal. An interesting ruling by the appellate court was that the Enquirer did not qualify as a "newspaper", and therefore could not avail itself of the law that said a newspaper which publishes a retraction is insulated from punitive damages. However, the appeals court still held that the amount of punitive damages was excessive, and reduced it to $150,000.

Answer: Tom Cruise

After the case was successfully completed, Cruise said, "I don't take a whole lot of pleasure in being here today. It is the last recourse against those that published vicious lies about me and my family. I have to protect them. This was certainly not about money. Every penny of this very substantial sum will be donated to charities."