Court Rejects Suit by Iraq Veteran Over Michael Moore Movie

[WSJ_law_blog]

When we posted last week on the libel-in-fiction claim of lawyer Ravi Batra — whose suit against the creators of a “Law & Order” episode survived summary judgment — we got to thinking: If it’s so difficult to sue for alleged defamation in a fictional TV show, it must be a lot easier when the alleged defamation appears in a purportedly non-fictional documentary.

But a recent ruling, in a different libel case, challenges that notion. In a March 21 decision, Aida Delgado-Colon, a district judge in Puerto Rico who was assigned to a three-judge panel on the First Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote that Michael Moore’s 2004 documentary, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” did not defame Peter Damon, a former U.S. Army Reserve sergeant. Click here for the opinion, and here for the NLJ story.

The clip, taken from an NBC Nightly News interview, portrays Damon discussing his war injuries and treatment. Damon, whose claims against Moore included appropriation of name, portrait and picture and intentional infliction of emotional distress, argued that viewers of the film were led to believe that he supported Moore’s anti-war agenda.

But Judge Delgado-Colon held that the film, one of the few documentaries to ever win the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival — the Palm d’Or — couldn’t be “reasonably construed as a statement promoting disloyalty or denouncing either the Commander-in-Chief or the medical treatment received by veterans.”

Damon’s lawyer, Philip D. Moran, reportedly said Damon is considering considering filing for cert at the U.S. Supreme Court.