MLRC Study Shows That Defendants Win 78.3 of Summary Judgment Motions

MLRC's latest study of summary judgment motions in media defamation and privacy litigation, found that media defendants won 78.3 percent of summary judgment motions made in cases between 1980 to 2006, and won partial summary judgment in an additional 6.3 percent of cases. The findings are contained in MLRC’s Bulletin 2007 Issue No. 2 Part B, published this month.

MLRC began examining summary judgment motions in media litigations in the early 1980s, when the courts' general preference for summary judgment in media case was called into question in footnotes in Hutchinson v. Proxmire, 443 U.S. 111, 120 n. 9 (1979), and Wolston v. Reader's Digest Association, 443 U.S. 157, 161 n.3 (1979). After several years of uncertainty, the issue was largely resolved by the Supreme Court=s decision in Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242 (1986).

The results of this latest study, are consistent with prior MLRC summary judgment studies. In the cases added in the newest study, which reached final resolution on summary judgment from 2001 through 2006, 82.0 percent of cases ended in summary judgments for media defendants, while an additional 6.4 percent ended in partial summary judgment.

In all the cases from 1980 through 2006, media defendants were more successful in obtaining summary judgment in state court than in federal court, and defendants facing public plaintiffs have had more success than defendants facing private plaintiffs.

Among trial court decisions that were final B were not appealed B the media won summary judgment in 80.8 percent of cases from 1980 to 2006, and won partial judgment in an additional 10.5 percent. Among all trial court decisions, including those that were appealed, defendants were granted full summary judgment in 80.2 percent.

More than one-fifth (21.6 percent) of trial court decisions denying summary judgment were appealed, as were 35.8 percent of trial court grants of summary judgment. The ultimate result of these appeals was a grant of summary judgment in 76.2 percent of cases, with partial summary judgment the end result in 5.2 percent.

Among all appellate decisions, including both intermediate and final appellate decisions, courts granted summary judgment in 73.0 percent of appellate decisions, and partial summary judgment in 5.9 percent.

There were three states with at least three reported summary judgment cases in which defendants ultimately won all of the motions: Alaska, the District of Columbia and Hawaii. In federal courts, about 90 percent of the reported cases in the Third and Tenth Circuits ended in grants of summary judgments to defendants.

Actual malice is the single most-often litigated issue in summary judgment motions, and it has been decided in favor of defendants in 82.5 percent of the summary judgment decisions since 1986 in which the issue was litigated. The most successful libel issue for defendants was that the statement at issue was not provably false, successful for defendants in 89.7 percent of cases. Defendants have been even more successful with the arguments that the statements at issue were hyperbole or were not provably false.

The most common non-libel claims and issues litigated in summary judgment cases were false light privacy and Aprivate facts.@ Media defendants were most successful, however, in motions for summary judgement in cases with general invasion of privacy claims, intrusion claims, and false light claims.

The media's high success rate when making summary judgment motions in libel, privacy and similar cases stands in sharp contrast to the rate for civil cases as a whole.

A study by the National Center for State Courts analyzing civil cases in state court in the most populous U.S. counties in fiscal year 1992 found that only 3.5 percent of civil cases were disposed of by summary judgment. In tort cases, the rate was even lower, 1.7 percent, although for intentional injury cases (including libel and related claims), summary judgment was the ultimate disposition in 2.6 percent of cases.

A more recent study examining civil cases in 2004 in found that the median rate at which cases were disposed of by summary judgment in five states was 1.7 percent.