September 16, 2008
By SETH AUGENSTEIN
SPARTA -- A town activist has sued a weekly newspaper and asked for $2 million in damages.
Jesse Wolosky filed a complaint in Superior Court, saying The Sparta Independent's February investigation of his home address -- and subsequent postings on an online forum by anonymous readers -- "seriously harmed (his) reputation and standing in the community."
The lawsuit also lists the reporter who wrote the article, Rosa Kasper, and the Independent editor at the time, Jane Primerano, as co-defendants along with Straus Newspapers, the parent company that owns the newspaper.
The story, headlined "Sparta Mayor Michael Spekhardt speaks out on recall petition," updated readers on the recall petition filed by Wolosky and other petitioners to recall then-mayor Spekhardt. The article also explored the issue of Wolosky's address, which had been listed variously as either 1 Vista Lane, 1 Vista Drive or Morning Star Drive. The article assessed the thoughts of several township officials who were looking into the address issue at the time.
Wolosky's attorney, Walter Luers, said Kasper had not reported the truth and incorrectly treated his client as a public figure.
"She got it wrong," Luers said.
The lawyer also mentioned that the newspaper's "blog" site -- where anonymous posters even wished for Wolosky to be sent to jail, according to the complaint -- was not properly patrolled by the newspaper.
Whether newspapers can be held liable for postings to their Web sites is an issue that has cropped up in other libel lawsuits; so far the courts have ruled that newspapers are not responsible for the postings of readers as long as the comments are not edited.
"They have a responsibility to verify the information on their Web site is true," Luers said.
Jeanne Straus, the publisher of The Sparta Independent, said she had seen a copy of the lawsuit but had not officially been served.
"We believe a lawsuit is baseless," Straus said.
Tom Cafferty, the general counsel for the New Jersey Press Association, said the key issue could be the determination of whether Wolosky is considered a public figure or not. If he is considered a public figure, then he would have a much more difficult time in proving actual malice; if he is considered a private citizen, then evidence of negligence in the reporting could constitute libel.
"That's certainly a pivotal issue in any libel case," Cafferty said.
Wolosky has been a vocal local activist since November 2007, and the libel suit is not the first legal action he has taken in 2008. There have been several petition drives, one of which is still in the court system. The first one, challenging an ordinance creating mandatory garbage collection, brought about the March 11 referendum on the issue. The challenge was defeated in a decisive vote.
However, he also organized recall petition drives against the three councilmen who supported the ordinance -- though those petitions ended short of the number of required signatures from registered voters. Following the failure of the recall petition drive, Spekhardt has threatened to sue the petition organizers.
