Hugh Franklin Waters

“ While few of us would want to change our system which protects such a large array of "rights," it may be that we have more than most of us need, and more than is good for a majority of us. We have the right to "bear arms" and with that right has come personal ownership of a veritable flood of weapons of almost every description, many of which are designed to, and have no other purpose than to, "hurt people." ”

“ Summary judgment was granted by the trial court, but the Court of Appeals of Ohio reversed, finding that the First Amendment did not privilege the press to show the entire performance on a news program without compensating the plaintiff for any financial injury he could prove at trial. The Ohio Supreme Court, although agreeing that the plaintiff had the right to the publicity value of his performance under Ohio law, reversed, believing that the First Amendment gave the television station an absolute privilege to report on its newscast matters of legitimate public interest. ”

“ The plethora of individual rights which we have in this nation of free men is undoubtedly a source of our strength, but in a sense, is also a source of, or at least the catalyst for, significant lawlessness that pervades our society. ”

“ Perhaps, those of us who are particularly skilled in the use of these weapons have a right to advertise our skills with the hope and intent that others of us who need these skills will give us employment. It may very well be, as defendant argues, that the state could not absolutely prohibit the "speech" which defendant engaged in unless it could be said that such speech concerned unlawful activity or was misleading. Plaintiff Norwood is not asking that defendant's speech be curtailed. ”

“ Instead, he is simply asking that a jury, after a trial, award him damages for the consequences of those advertisements. Thus, the cases cited by both plaintiff and defendant on the permissible boundaries of regulation of First Amendment rights simply do not apply.
As the authors in 16A Am. Jur. 2d, Constitutional Law § 506 at 343, point out:
Although freedom of speech or of the press under constitutional guaranties may not be altogether restrained, he who abuses the right may nevertheless be held to liability therefor. ”

“ The court believes that a reasonable juror could find that advertisements such as those described above had a substantial probability of ultimately causing harm to some individual. In fact, if the allegations are true, these advertisements caused harm not only to the plaintiff, but to several other individuals. ”

“ Thus, it is clear that it is inappropriate, to say the least, to equate the issue with which the Court was dealing in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, supra, with the issue in this case. In Sullivan, one of three elected commissioners of the city of Montgomery, Alabama, was awarded a jury verdict of $500,000 on his libel suit against the newspaper as the result of an alleged libelous advertisement run by the "Committee To Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle For Freedom in the South." ”

“ Reasonable jurors might conclude that a reasonable person shouldn't be especially surprised when he learns that the gun that had been hired through his advertisement was used to do one of the things that guns often do and are designed to do—hurt people. ”

“ He has no special privilege to invade the rights and liberties of others.'" Id. at 683 (citing Associated Press v. NLRB, 301 U.S. 103, 132 (1937) .
The argument that the news media is absolutely shielded by the First Amendment from suits by persons who claim that they have been wronged or have suffered damages to their property by actions of the news media was answered by the Supreme Court in Zacchini v. ”

“ Id. at 505 (citing Valentine v. Chrestensen, 316 U.S. 52 (1942) ) . In Virginia Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748 (1976) , the court held that even speech proposing no more than a commercial transaction enjoys a substantial degree of First Amendment protection. However, in Metromedia, Inc. v. San Diego, supra, the Court, in reference to that opinion, said:
That decision, however, did not equate commercial and non-commercial speech for First Amendment purposes ”