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4th Circuit Rejects CACI's Defamation Claims Against Air America Radio Host
The American Lawyer
August 07, 2008
After the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke in early 2004, Air America Radio host Randi Rhodes described prison interrogators supplied by the defense contractor CACI as "killers" who raped children, showed no loyalty to America, and "fought on the side of apartheid."
CACI and its legal team at Steptoe & Johnson shot back, filing a defamation suit in federal district court in Alexandria, Va. (aka the Rocket Docket). The court dismissed that suit in September 2006, and on Tuesday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did the same, ruling that all of Rhodes' speech, even obvious exaggeration, was protected by the First Amendment. The court concluded that military contractors are public figures; as such, they had to prove that Rhodes acted with "reckless disregard for the truth" in making her claims. More damning still, the court found that many of Rhodes' claims are backed by reliable sources.
The win is a major victory for Davis Wright Tremaine's Laura Handman, who took over the case midway through discovery in late 2005.
Handman -- who has defended dozens of publishers, authors and broadcasters against libel claims -- believed she had a strong case when Air America and Rhodes contacted her, she says. The liberal radio programmer initially called on Melvin Wulf, a longtime legal director of the ACLU in the 1960s and 1970s who now practices at Beldock, Levine & Hoffman.
Wulf, who did not return a call or e-mail seeking comment, asked the district court to dismiss the case on novel grounds, Handman says. He argued that contractors, like the government itself, should never be able to bring a libel claim. The court disagreed. After that ruling, Air America turned to Handman.
With about three months to complete discovery under the court's famously fast path to trial, Handman worked to get her hands on both public and classified government reports on the prison scandal and to track down CACI interrogators around the country. "You don't have much time in Eastern Virginia to engage in discovery on a topic as complicated as Abu Ghraib," she says. They were making progress when federal district Judge Gerald Bruce Lee granted Air America's motion for summary judgment.
In a unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel, the court wrote again and again that Rhodes' rants -- even that CACI interrogators ordered the rape of children -- were "not demonstrably false."
As for her less accurate declarations, including those about CACI supporting apartheid and killing without penalty, the court classified those as protected "hyperbole."
William Koegel, Steptoe's lead lawyer on the case, was unavailable for comment. John O'Connor, another Steptoe partner on the CACI team, says the firm has represented CACI for more than a decade and continues to represent the contractor in tort cases brought by detainees who claim CACI interrogators abused them.
