Supreme Court To Consider Fine Line Between Falsity And Malice

A lawsuit between a humiliated pilot and his employer, Air Wisconsin, will require the Supreme Court to re-examine the New York Times v. Sullivan precedent that set the line between overstating facts and acting with malice. After the pilot failed a flight simulator test and storming off in an expletive-laden huff, the simulator operator called TSA to report that the pilot, who had boarded a flight home, had been terminated, could be mentally unstable and – recalling that he owned a gun – added that he might be carrying a weapon. TSA called the pilot’s flight off the runway and removed him. The pilot sued for defamation. This case, says the writer, “unpacks the relationship between falsity and malice when the speaker has complete knowledge of the facts at hand and chooses extreme words to describe them.”