Larry Flynt Debates Jerry Falwell on Hustler Magazine: U.S. Supreme Court Case (1997)

• published: 06 Feb 2014
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Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held, in a unanimous 8--0 decision (Justice Anthony Kennedy took no part in the consideration or decision of the case), that the First Amendment's free-speech guarantee prohibits awarding damages to public figures to compensate for emotional distress intentionally inflicted upon them. Thus, Hustler magazine's parody of Jerry Falwell was deemed to be within the law, because the Court found that reasonable people would not have interpreted the parody to contain factual claims, leading to a reversal of the jury verdict in favor of Falwell, who had previously been awarded $150,000 in damages by a lower court. While Hustler magazine has always been known for its explicit pictures of nude women and for what many consider crude humor, the prominent fundamentalist Protestant minister Jerry Falwell objected to the parody ad the magazine printed in 1983 targeted at him, in which Falwell related having an incestuous encounter with his mother in an outhouse. The satire at issue was a takeoff of an advertising campaign for Campari, an Italian apéritif. The real ads were tongue-in-cheek interviews with celebrities talking about their "first time". The ads, which played off the double entendre in the headline ("X talks about his first time"), initially appeared to discuss the star's first sexual experience before revealing that the discussion actually concerned the subject's first time drinking Campari. The Hustler parody, created by writer Terry Abrahamson and art director Mike Salisbury, featured a picture of Falwell, and a fictional "interview" in which "Falwell" describes his first sexual experience as occurring "with Mom" in an outhouse while both were "drunk off our God-fearing asses on Campari." In the spoof interview, "Falwell" goes on to say that he was so intoxicated that "Mom looked better than a Baptist whore with a $100 donation," that he decided to have sex with his mother since she had "showed all the other guys in town such a good time", and that they had intercourse regularly afterwards. Finally, when asked if he had tried Campari since, "Falwell" answered, "I always get sloshed before I go out to the pulpit. You don't think I could lay down all that bullshit sober, do you?" The ad carried a disclaimer in small print at the bottom of the page, reading "ad parody—not to be taken seriously." The magazine's table of contents also listed the ad as "Fiction; Ad and Personality Parody." Falwell sued Larry Flynt, Hustler magazine, and Flynt's distribution company in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia for libel, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Before trial, the court granted Flynt's motion for summary judgment on the invasion of privacy claim, and the remaining two charges proceeded to trial. A jury found in favor of Flynt on the libel claim, stating that the parody could not "reasonably be understood as describing actual facts about [Falwell] or actual events in which [he] participated." However, the jury ruled in favor of Falwell on the intentional infliction of emotional distress charge, and awarded Falwell $150,000. Flynt appealed to the Fourth Circuit. The Fourth Circuit affirmed, rejecting Flynt's argument that the actual-malice standard of New York Times Company v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964) applied in cases of intentional infliction of emotional distress where the plaintiff was a public figure, as Falwell concededly was. The New York Times standard focused too heavily on the truth of the statement at issue; for the Fourth Circuit, it was enough that Virginia law required the defendant to act intentionally. After the Fourth Circuit declined to rehear the case en banc, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Flynt's request to hear the case. The People vs. Larry Flynt, a 1996 film directed by Miloš Forman starring Woody Harrelson as Flynt and Edward Norton as Flynt's lawyer Alan Isaacman, features the case prominently. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falwell_v._Hustler_Magazine Image By Liberty University (Liberty University) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons