COLUMBIA, S.C. (Legal Newsline) - A high school football coach who was demoted after adopting a disastrous “no punt” strategy can keep $200,000 a jury awarded him in a lawsuit over an email criticizing his paperwork skills, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled.
While courts including the South Carolina Supreme Court itself have found high school football coaches to be public figures who face a higher standard of proof in defamation suits, that didn’t apply in this case, the court ruled in a Jan. 17 decision by Justice D. Garrison Hill. The email in question addressed a subject entirely separate from the coach’s controversial game strategy, the majority said.
Jeffrey Cruce was hired as the Berkeley County High School coach in 2011 and in 2015 adopted the “no punt” strategy of attempting to convert on fourth downs, which “stirred intense debate among followers of the team” and generated local and even national news coverage. He was demoted to middle school guidance counselor after his team suffered “lopsided defeats” and ultimately resigned.
He sued the Berkeley County School District for wrongful termination and defamation after an athletic trainer distributed an email to 45 employees and volunteer coaches stating he had checked Cruce’s files and “some documents may be misplaced” and that could be a problem “from a liability standpoint.”
A trial court dismissed the wrongful termination claim but allowed the defamation claim over the email go to the jury, which awarded $200,000. The appeals court reversed, holding Cruce was a “public official,” which made the county immune under state laws over employee acts that amount to “actual malice,” the standard required prove defamation against a public figure.
The South Carolina reversed the decision and restored the jury verdict, over objections by two justices.
“We understand Cruce was a public employee and enjoyed media attention akin to that of many sports figures,” the majority said. “But that does not transform him into a public official, a classification that would strip him of his right to protect his name from being defamed to the same extent as a private citizen.”
Neither was Cruce a “limited public figure,” someone who thrusts himself into a public controversy who must prove actual malice, or knowing or reckless disregard for the truth, to win a defamation suit. In fairness, the South Carolina Supreme Court said, the appeals court relied upon a prior Supreme Court ruling that found a high school football coach was a public figure, but that ruling has since been rescinded.
The majority abandoned a five-part test borrowed from the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for a slimmed-down three-part test: Did the plaintiff voluntarily inject himself into a public controversy, did the defamation occur while the plaintiff was “embroiled” in that controversy, and was the defamation related to the controversy?
Cruce’s coaching strategy may have been controversial but it wasn’t connected to the statements he sued over, the court ruled.
“Stevens' defamatory comments related to Cruce's paperwork skills, not his gridiron acumen,” the court concluded. A rational reader could conclude “Cruce was incompetent and unfit to perform the administrative duties of his position,” the court said. ”The `liability’ buzzword added a suggestion of not just incompetence but illegality.”
Justice George James disagreed the jury could have reasonably found the email defamatory, saying “a mild critique of Cruce's paperwork skills is not in any sense defamatory.” Justice John Few dissented, saying the email wasn’t defamatory. He also criticized the majority’s change in the standard for determining if someone is a limited public figure, saying it “accomplishes nothing.”