Hatfill v. the New York Times Co.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that employee of government contractor was both a public official and public figure for purposes of Sullivan
• finding a research scientist to be a limited purpose public figure during the 2001 anthrax scare because, prior to the defamatory statements, he had made public speeches and appeared in national media where he was a “vocal critic of the government’s unpreparedness for a bioterrorist attack”
• to allege “malice,” a plaintiff must allege that defendant had a “subjective awareness of the probable falsity” of the publication
• “[W]e first address the nature of the ‘particular public controversy’ that gave rise to the alleged defamation to determine whether [the plaintiff] thrust himself into that controversy.”
• threat from bioterrorism and the nation’s readiness to handle that threat a public controversy

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).