A Louisiana supreme court justice won a $300,000 defamation verdict against the state's largest newspaper on Monday, in a rare trial involving an elected public official. Jurors in Iberville parish found that a 2019 editorial by the Advocate, headlined “Jeff Hughes … made a mockery of justice,” defamed justice Jefferson Davis Hughes III. The award was significantly less than the $10m Hughes sought for injury to his reputation and emotional distress.
Actual malice standard
Because Hughes is a US public figure, he had to prove “actual malice” in connection with the editorial, which centered on his handling of a child custody case as a district court judge in 1998 and 1999. The trial involved days of testimony and arguments.
The case was the second in the US on consecutive business days to show a jury's willingness to award damages against a publication. On Friday, an Alabama jury awarded $9.25m against the New York Times for wrongly reporting that a college basketball player was at the scene of a fatal shooting.
Editorial and investigation
Lawyers for Hughes claimed he was libeled by the editorial, which ran two days after an investigative news story into the custody case. The story, produced by the Advocate and WWL Louisiana, quoted a woman who described helping her son fight for custody of his five-year-old boy, Austin, in 1998, when she asked Hughes to recuse himself. She said she understood Hughes was dating a lawyer on the opposite side, Berkley Durbin, but that Hughes refused to step away.
The investigative story reported that Durbin withdrew from the case in August 1998, days before Hughes expanded custody for Austin's mother. The editorial later said “in 1999 …” Hughes and Durbin were “romantically involved” and said “Durbin represented Austin's mother,” WWL Louisiana reported.
Testimony and verdict
The Advocate's editor-in-chief at the time and the piece's editor testified they did everything they could to ensure accuracy. The paper took years to clarify the timeline in an editor's note online, despite pressure from Hughes. Testimony established that Hughes wanted to keep everything off the record, preventing the newspaper from reporting what he said. He then stormed out of an on-the-record interview and never responded to an offer for another, said testimony from the then editor-in-chief, Peter Kovacs, now retired.
Kovacs and the writer of the editorial testified that the editorial was not part of an anti-Hughes agenda. Hughes said in court that the newspaper “can't bring themselves to admit they made a mistake.” On Friday, the presiding judge, Kevin Kimball, ruled that Hughes could prove the Advocate showed a “reckless disregard for the truth.” The verdict came down Monday night after 45 minutes of jury deliberations.
Jury foreman Robert E Davis told WWL Louisiana the panel was split equally over whether Hughes had been defamed, but agreed the damages did not amount to $10m. “People were ready to get the hell out of here,” Davis said. An attorney for Hughes, Chuck Hughes, said “justice was served” and Hughes “was able to clear his name from this unfortunate defamation.” It was not immediately clear whether the Advocate intended to appeal.
