The titan publisher refused, saying that the ad in no way reflected on him or his performance as a public official. Sullivan sued the four Negro clergymen who paid for the ad and The New York Times.
The trial judge found the ad "libelous per se" and therefore not under First Amendment protection. Malice was presumed. .
The governor of Alabama and other public officials also brought libel suits against the Times seeking $3 million in damages.
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2) Discuss the similarities and the dissimilarities between the common law of Alabama as applied by the Alabama courts in Sullivan v. New York times, and the Sedition Act of 1798. .
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The Sedition Act of 1798, passed by President Adams's Federalists to suppress Jefferson's Republicans, made it a crime (punishable by both fine and imprisonment) to criticize federal officials or the Federal Government. Specifically, it said that "if any person shall, write, print, utter or publish. any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress or the President .with intent to defame .or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States" (pg. 58). Alabama civil law concerning libels states that a publication is "libelous per se" if the words "tend to injure a person in his reputation" or "ring [him] into public contempt. The Sullivan trial court stated that the standard was met if the words are such as to "injure him in his public office, or impute misconduct to him in his office, or want of official integrity, or want of fidelity to a public trust- In the Sullivan case, the trial judge instructed the jury that such statements were "libelous per se", legal injury being implied without proof of actual damages and that malice was presumed. As to punitive damages, the judge instructed that mere negligence was not evidence of actual malice.
