CARSON CITY, Nev. (Legal Newsline) – Citing a sexual assault complaint that was not pursued by authorities in its reporting has The Associated Press fighting a defamation lawsuit by hotel magnate Steve Wynn.
The Nevada Supreme Court on Oct. 29 reinstated Wynn’s lawsuit, finding The AP couldn’t rely on the fair report privilege to defend itself. Instead, the Clark County trial court will now rule on The AP’s anti-SLAPP motion.
Those motions are used by defendants early in defamation lawsuits when they believe they are entitled to free speech protections.
“Here, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department did not make an arrest based on this complaint,” Justice Elissa Cadish wrote.
“However, even if it had, section 611, comment h suggests that the complaint would still not fall within the fair report privilege because it is simply the complainant’s statement about the facts of the case rather than an official action or proceeding such as an arrest or the bringing of charges.”
It started in February 2018, when the LVMPD held a press conference to announce sexual assault complaints by two women against Wynn.
However, because the alleged assaults took place in the 1970s, police did not pursue charges because of a 20-year statute of limitations that had expired.
The AP published an article detailing the allegations in one of the women’s complaints. Wynn’s defamation lawsuit says those claims are false and that the AP intentionally described the complaint in an incomplete and unfair manner.
The state Supreme Court was tasked with deciding if the woman’s complaint qualified as an official action protected by the fair report privilege.
“To hold that a law enforcement officer’s mere transcription of a complainant’s allegations, absent any additional official action or proceeding, warrants application of the fair report privilege would be inconsistent with the underlying polices behind the privilege and would unnecessarily impinge on our defamation laws,” Cadish wrote.
“Therefore, we hold that a news article reporting on the contents of a citizen’s complaint to the police – which was neither investigated nor evaluated by the police – is not a report of an official action or proceeding for which the fair report privilege provides an absolute defense.”