The US Supreme Court has refused to revive a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times by Steven Hatfill, the former government scientist who contended that he was defamed by a series of columns about the anthrax mailings of 2001.
The court Monday, according to a Bloomberg News report, rejected Hatfill’s appeal in his suit against the New York Times Co stemming the columns by Nicholas Kristof that described the scientist as the “likely culprit.” Hatfill challenged a federal appeals court’s conclusion that he was a public figure on the subject of bioterrorism. That finding meant he had to show that the Times and Kristof acted with “actual malice,” the toughest legal standard for a defamation plaintiff to meet. Hatfill said he became prominent only because of Kristof’s accusations.
Once considered a "person of interest" in the anthrax investigation, Hatfill's name was officially cleared this summer. His onetime colleague, Bruce Ivins, died of an apparent overdose in late July in the face of an indictment in the attacks. The Times lawsuit was one of several Hatfill filed over his public link to the case; just this summer, he settled a separate Privacy Act suit with the Department of Justice over the original media leak of his status in the criminal inquiry, according to the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press (RCFP). [Link]
Kristof dedicated several columns in 2002 to the anthrax case and urged the FBI to either ramp up its investigation of one "Mr. Z," as Kristof called him, or exonerate the man. In August of that year, at a press conference Hatfill called to proclaim his innocence, he outed himself as "Mr. Z." In addition to the broad libel claim, Hatfill listed 11 statements from the columns he believed were defamatory. He further alleged The Times intentionally inflicted emotional distress on him.
