Libel lawsuit was mostly harmless

Only journalists would reminisce about libel suits.
Dan Rottenberg was back in Jay County last month for a brief visit. He’d come to The Commercial Review as sports editor about 1964, graduated to editor and stayed until about 1968 before he took a bigger leap and joined The Wall Street Journal.
We’ve kept in touch over the years. Dan’s been back for a few events at Arts Place, which traces its roots to a foreign movie series that Dan helped found back in the ’60s. And when our twins were looking at colleges in the Philadelphia area, they stayed with Dan and his wife Barbara.
So it only made sense that when he was back in the neighborhood, we would get together.
Dan wanted to tour the Jay County Historical Society’s museum. He’d played a key role in the founding of the historical society as well. And he wanted to make sure Barbara got a chance to see Arts Place.
But eventually, we were gathered with other friends and family for a summer dinner of salads, fresh fruit and good wine.
And when Dan started reminiscing, it didn’t take long for libel suits to come up.
Back about the Christmas season of 1965 or ’66, a local charmer whose business happened to be less than legal held a holiday party.
He was a guy who owned slot machines and other illegal gambling devices and games that could be found in local lodges and fraternal organizations.
(By today’s standards, when the State of Indiana is the largest purveyor and promoter of gambling, this guy’s operation looks pretty tame, at least from a moral standpoint. At the time, from a legal standpoint, it was outlawed.)
He was also, by all accounts, the sort of guy who likes to be hospitable.
So when he and his wife held their holiday party, they invited lots of people. Among those invited, it turned out, were some people who should have known better than to attend: At least one police chief, prosecutor, judge and state police officer.
It wasn’t long before that leaked out and made the front page of the paper. And it wasn’t long before an editorial pointed out that it was pretty stupid for public officials — particularly those in law enforcement — to attend a party hosted by a guy engaged in illegal activities. If they didn’t know what they were getting into, they should have.
As you might guess, the officials involved were not happy. They didn’t like having their names listed on the front page as attendees at a Christmas party hosted by a guy running illegal gambling.
And they sure didn’t like getting spanked on the editorial page for their misjudgment.
To save face, they sued.
It didn’t work, of course. In the U.S., truth is an absolute defense against a charge of libel. Opinion is protected. And public officials are held to a higher standard than private citizens.
The whole thing, though a nuisance, blew over pretty quickly as Dan remembered it around the dinner table.
But, I told him, there was just one problem.
All of this occurred when I was a freshman in college and was routinely hitchhiking back and forth for weekends at home. When I did so, I was within the jurisdiction of three of the officials who were suing the newspaper.
More than once I worried about what would happen if a squad car had pulled me over and someone had asked my name.