In November 2014, Mandell Menkes won a directed verdict on behalf of its clients – a local television station and a news reporter – in a jury trial in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), Ohio.  The plaintiff in the case, a former high school art/photography teacher, alleged he was damaged by a news broadcast reporting on an investigation into allegations that the plaintiff gave students access to a laptop computer containing child pornography.  The report did not name plaintiff, but it did contain a banner on the screen that read “TEACHER UNDER FIRE – Child porn found on laptop.”  Although the students claimed they found child pornography on the teacher’s laptop, the ensuing police investigation did not uncover any child pornography.

After a week of trial testimony led by Mandell Menkes lawyer Stephen Rosenfeld, the court entered a directed verdict for defendants ruling that the report was not defamatory per se because plaintiff could not prove it was about him without reference to outside evidence and “the gist and sting” of the report was substantially true.  Plaintiff appealed the directed verdict and the appellate court affirmed, concluding that taken as a whole, “[t]he newscast could not have been reasonably understood to claim that [plaintiff] had child pornography on his computer”—but merely that he was being investigated.READ MORE HERE