LA Times Beats Geragos’ Libel Suit Over Genocide Payouts
Posted on August. 30. 2023
By Gina Kim · Law360 (August 8, 2023, 9:29 PM EDT) — A California state judge ended attorney Mark Geragos’ libel suit against the Los Angeles Times over its coverage of a $37 million settlement for Armenian Genocide victims that prompted a State Bar probe, noting in an order made public on Tuesday that the reporters never accuse Geragos of misappropriation, theft or embezzlement.
On Aug. 3, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Wendy Chang issued a written order that appeared to largely stick with her tentative ruling that she orally issued from the bench during a hearing in June that granted the Los Angeles Times’ special motion to strike Geragos’ complaint under the anti-SLAPP statute, which takes aim at lawsuits that target free speech, often referred to as strategic litigation against public participation.
At a hearing on June 22, Judge Chang remarked from the bench that she found nothing in the Times’ reporting of the Armenian Genocide settlements to be actionably false for the purposes of Geragos’ libel claim.
Geragos sued the newspaper and its reporters Paul Pringle, Harriet Ryan and Matt Hamilton alleging libel per se, false light invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress a year after they ran their investigation of a class action in which Geragos and attorney Brian Kabateck of Kabateck LLP, as part of the victims’ legal team, filed claims against insurers for unpaid death benefits for victims of the Armenian Genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in the 1910s. Geragos alleged in his March complaint that the writers embarked on a “broad-scale fishing expedition,” reaching out to his former clients and colleagues “trying to see what dirt, if any, they could find on him.” The celebrity lawyer said in court papers that the coverage was susceptible to defamatory interpretation by the average reader and that his reputation and business have taken a hit. In her order uploaded onto the docket Tuesday, Judge Chang ruled that the Times and the reporters met the threshold to show that the anti-SLAPP statute protects their coverage, and that Geragos failed to show the probability of prevailing on his claims, noting the “undisputed evidence establishes defendants are entitled to anti-SLAPP protection.” At the outset, Geragos doesn’t claim the reporters said anything affirmatively false either in the AXA insurance articles or the subsequent articles covering the California State Bar’s announcement of its investigation into Geragos and Kabateck after the Times story ran.
To answer whether a reasonable fact finder could conclude that the coverage states or implies a provably false assertion, Geragos only proffers an “inaccurate premise,” the judge said, namely, that the articles sparked a negative public reaction based on incorrect inferences drawn from the articles and, accordingly, the articles must have made false statements or implications of fact. “This logic is flawed,” Judge Chang wrote. “Average readers can and do draw incorrect conclusions from true statements all the time. The fact that this happens does not make the publication libelous.” Furthermore, the Times’ coverage lays out facts about the AXA settlement claims handled by several individuals, include Geragos and his colleagues’ denials and explanations “many times.” And, at no point do the articles ever accuse Geragos of “misappropriation, theft or embezzlement,” nor do they accuse Geragos of enabling others to do so, the order said. The judge rejected Geragos’ argument that the Times coverage didn’t qualify for anti-SLAPP protection since the settlement isn’t an “ongoing controversy” as it closed in 2016, noting that the settlement fund claimants “allegedly remain, to this day, deprived of funds that should have been distributed.” Judge Chang also disagreed with Geragos’ contention that any alleged mismanagement of the settlement money is of interest at most to the Armenian community, pointing out that the alleged botching of the settlement fund didn’t limit its interest to only members of the same ethnic community. “Humanity is not so narrow nor are its interests so self-centered,” the order stated.
Judge Chang’s final order comes nearly two months after she heard oral arguments on the defendants’ anti-SLAPP motion. At that hearing, Geragos’ counsel Tina Glandian urged the judge to reconsider her tentative ruling, arguing that whether the Times’ coverage conveys defamatory meaning to the average reader should be left up to a jury, not the judge, to answer. Glandian argued that the Times reporters weren’t looking for the truth but wanted to write about a Tom Girardi-”type of scandal against Mr. Geragos” and came up short.
She maintained that the public interpretation from the coverage was that Geragos misappropriated settlement funds, pointing to a slew of comments from readers calling for Geragos to be jailed, along with the subsequent State Bar probe. But in her order, Judge Chang rejected Geragos’ proffer of evidence that referenced the online comments by readers to back his position that the coverage drew defamatory implication, noting that his showing “is far from a showing of ‘everyone’ as argued by plaintiff.” Furthermore, Geragos is a public figure and, as such, he hasn’t shown the probability that he can prove actual malice by clear and convincing evidence against the L.A. Times and its reporters, the judge said.
“Reviewing the record, the court finds defendants did not act with malice or reckless disregard,” the judge wrote. “The exhibits attached to plaintiff’s com- plaint demonstrate defendants sent more than fifty questions to plaintiff’s under- lying co-counsel the month before they published their story. Regardless of the questions’ purported ‘inanity’ (using plaintiff’s term), the court finds that such act demonstrates an honest effort to accomplish truthful reporting.”
The judge pointed to the slew of detailed questions the reporters sent to Geragos long before the stories ran, coupled with numerous exhibits and publicly available information that, she said, the reporters indisputably reviewed, along with numerous sources they interviewed. All of this blocks the court from concluding the defendants acted with malice or reckless disregard for the truth, the order stated.
And because Geragos’ libel claim fails, so do his claims for false light invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress, the order said. Judge Chang also refused to grant Geragos leave to conduct limited discovery, finding there to be no good cause to do so. Representatives for Geragos and the defendants did not immediately return requests for comment late Tuesday.
Geragos is represented by Tina Glandian of Geragos & Geragos APC.
The Los Angeles Times and its reporters are represented by Kelli L. Sager, Dan Laidman and Sam F. Cate-Gumpert of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. The case is Mark Geragos v. Los Angeles Times Communications LLC et al., case number 23STCV06397, in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles. –Editing by Kristen Becker.