Cohen v. Cowles Media Company

501 U.S. 663 (1991)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

The Minneapolis Star and Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press each published a story on the gubernatorial election campaign reporting that Marlene Johnson, the DFL nominee for lieutenant governor had been charged in 1969 for three counts of unlawful assembly and in 1970 had been convicted of shoplifting. Cohen (P) came to newspaper reporters Sturdevant (Star Tribune) and Salisbury (Pioneer Press) and gave them information about the criminal troubles of one of the candidates for lieutenant governor. P did so on the assurance that both would keep their source confidential. Neither reporter informed P that their promises of confidentiality were subject to the approval of their editor. Both reporters jumped on the case and interviewed the candidate. The Star also assigned another reporter who independently discovered P's role in bringing the criminal records out of storage. P's name was published in connection with the leaks to the press the very next day. P sued. It is undisputed that P gave the information about Marlene Johnson’s arrest and conviction to a reporter for each of the newspapers in return for the reporters’ promises that P’s identity be kept confidential. It is also true that the newspapers’ editors overruled these promises. The editors reasoned that the source of the information was just as newsworthy as was the information itself. The editors also felt that not revealing the source would be misleading as it would cast suspicion on others and it was only a matter of time that the source would be discovered by other papers. The Star Tribune had also endorsed the other ticket in the election, and they thought that withholding the identity would be construed as an effort to protect its favorite candidate. P was fired. The case was submitted to the jury on the theories of breach of contract and fraudulent misrepresentation. The jury found liability on both theories. The trial court ruled that the First Amendment did not bar P's contract and misrepresentation claims. P won the verdict of $200,000 and $250,000 in punitives. The court of appeals set aside the punitives as the misrepresentation claim had not been proven as a matter of law. The $200,000 award for compensatory damages was upheld. D appealed. The Supreme Court of Minnesota affirmed the denial of recovery for fraudulent misrepresentation but also held that there could be no recovery for breach of contract; to impose a contract theory on this arrangement puts an unwarranted legal rigidity on a special ethical relationship, precluding necessary consideration of factors underlying that ethical relationship. The court then concluded that a contract theory, which looks only to whether there was a promise and an acceptance, does not fit a situation where the essential concern is with the intrinsic nature of the overall transaction. The court then went on to examine promissory estoppel. The court found that this theory best fit the kind of confidential commitments that news media in newsgathering made. But the court then did not like the problem of having to shed the neutrality of contract analysis for an inquiry into the editorial process of deciding whether the identity of the news source was needed for a proper reporting of the news. The court concluded that such an analysis was an impermissible intrusion into the newspaper’s First Amendment free press rights and held that the verdict for P was not sustainable. P appealed claiming that the press was not immune from laws that apply to everyone else.