Barr v. Matteo

360 U.S. 564 (1959)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Professional bureaucrats (Matteo and Madigan (Ps)) created a plan to obviate the possibility that their agency might have to make large terminal-leave payments during the next fiscal year out of general agency funds, should the life of the agency be extended by Congress. Agency employees would be discharged, paid accrued annual leave out of the $2,600,000 earmarked for terminal-leave payments, rehired immediately as temporary employees, and restored to permanent status should the agency's life be extended. Barr (D), the General Manager of the agency, opposed Ds' plan on the ground that it violated the spirit of the Thomas Amendment, 64 Stat. 768, 2 and expressed his opposition to the Housing Expediter. The Expediter decided against general adoption of the plan, but at P's request gave permission for its use in connection with approximately fifty employees, including both respondents, on a voluntary basis. The life of the agency was extended. Two and a half years later, the Office of Rent Stabilization received a letter from Senator John J. Williams of Delaware, inquiring about the terminal-leave payments made under the plan in 1950. P drafted a reply to the letter, which he did not attempt to bring to the attention of D, and then prepared a reply which he sent to D's office for his signature as Acting Director of the agency. D was out of the office, and a secretary signed the submitted letter, which was then delivered by P to Senator Williams on the morning of February 3, 1953. Senator Williams delivered a speech on the floor of the Senate strongly criticizing the plan, stating that 'to say the least it is an unjustifiable raid on the Federal Treasury, and heads of every agency in the Government who have condoned this practice should be called to task.' The letter above referred to was ordered printed in the Congressional Record. Other Senators joined in the attack on the plan. P then served upon Ds letters expressing his intention to suspend them from duty, and at the same time ordered issuance by the office of the press release which is the subject of this litigation. Ps sued, charging that the press release, in itself and as coupled with the contemporaneous news reports of senatorial reaction to the plan, defamed them to their injury. D defended on the ground that the issuance of the press release was protected by either a qualified or an absolute privilege. The trial court overruled these contentions and instructed the jury to return a verdict for P if it found the release defamatory. The jury found for P. D appealed, raising only the issue of absolute privilege. The judgment of the trial court was affirmed by the Court of Appeals, which held that 'in explaining his decision [to suspend respondents] to the general public D went entirely outside his line of duty' and that thus the absolute privilege, assumed otherwise to be available, did not attach. The Supreme Court granted certiorari, vacated the Court of Appeals' judgment, and remanded the case 'with directions to pass upon petitioner's claim of a qualified privilege.' On remand the Court of Appeals held that the press release was protected by a qualified privilege, but that there was evidence from which a jury could reasonably conclude that D had acted maliciously, or had spoken with lack of reasonable grounds for believing that his statement was true and that either conclusion would defeat the qualified privilege. D again sought and was granted certiorari.