A columnist for The Dallas Morning News waded into litigious territory when he wrote a column about suicide that so upset a set of parents who were already grieving over the loss of their son that they filed a libel suit.

And after a court of appeals sustained the parents’ defamation claims, Austin attorney and former chief justice Wallace Jefferson recently convinced the Texas Supreme Court that the newspaper and its columnist’s opinions were protected by the First Amendment, reinstating a trial court ruling dismissing the libel case.