Psychoanalyst loses long-running libel suit against 'New Yorker' writer.A San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden jury recently found that free-lance writer Janet Malcolm Janet Malcolm (born 1934) is an American writer and journalist on the staff of The New Yorker magazine. She is the author of The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession, and Inside the Freud Archives. did not libel psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson in an unflattering 1983 profile in The New Yorker magazine. The verdict ends a decade-long suit in which Masson claimed that Malcolm had made up several quotes or rearranged his words in a way that made him look arrogant and promiscuous and ruined him professionally. Malcolm said all the quotes were based on interviews she had taped or taken notes on, and denied that her methods were improper. (Susan Cohen cohen or kohen (Hebrew: “priest”) Jewish priest descended from Zadok (a descendant of Aaron), priest at the First Temple of Jerusalem. The biblical priesthood was hereditary and male. , Writer Wins in Masson Libel Retrial retrial n. a new trial granted upon the motion of the losing party, based on obvious error, bias or newly-discovered evidence. (See: newly-discovered evidence) , Wash. Post, Nov. 3, 1994, at D1.) Manhattan lawyer Martin Garbus, an authority on First Amendment litigation An action brought in court to enforce a particular right. The act or process of bringing a lawsuit in and of itself; a judicial contest; any dispute. When a person begins a civil lawsuit, the person enters into a process called litigation. , sees the decision as the last of a wave of major libel suits brought by public figures against newspapers and magazines in the 1980s. Some plaintiffs won substantial verdicts, Garbus said, but the wave of sympathy seems to have crested and ebbed. "Those suits are over now, and it's all to the good," he said. Masson had sought $7 million in damages from the magazine and Malcolm. His appeal of the initial summary judgment went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which let stand the Ninth Circuit's decision that the case should go to trial. Last year a federal jury found the five disputed quotes false but deadlocked on damages, requiring a retrial. The New Yorker was cleared. (Masson v. Malcolm, 832 F. Supp. 1350 (N.D. Cal. 1993).) In the second trial, Malcolm acknowleged combining parts of many interviews into one narrative but denied distorting Masson's messages. The jury found that Malcolm had "fabricated" two of the five quotes but Masson had not proven she had done it knowingly and maliciously (No. CV-847548EFL EFL - Extended Fortran Language (N.D. Cal. Nov. 2, 1994).) The profile, later published as a book, described Masson's dismissal as head of the Freud Archives in London for challenging some of the tenets of orthodox Freudian theory. (See also Get the Gist? Court Okays Rewritten Quotes, TRIAL, Dec. 1989, at 19; Rodney A. Smolla Rodney A. Smolla, is an award-winning author and respected first amendment scholar.[1] [2] He is currently the Dean of the Washington and Lee School of Law. , When a Quote Is Not a Quote, TRIAL, Jan. 1991, at 16; Libel Suit for Fabricated Quotes Reinstated, TRIAL, Sept. 1991, at 85.) |
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