Two libel cases involving "dummy copies" of newspapers, one in Virginia and one in Tennessee, have produced opposite results including a judgment of almost $1 million against the Tennessee paper. In both cases, statements placed in a draft of the upcoming edition as a joke, subsequently overlooked in the editing process and published with the final edition, provided the fodder for the libel case. The Virginia case is Yeagle v. Collegiate Times, 497 S.E.2d 136 (Va. 1998). The Tennessee case concluded with a jury verdict and no published opinion.

Virginia Case

   Yeagle involved the student newspaper at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), known as the Collegiate Times. In 1996 the Collegiate Times ran an article describing Virginia Tech's successful placement of students in a state Governor's Fellows Program. Portions of the article focused on Sharon D. Yeagle, the assistant to the vice president of student affairs at Virginia Tech. Yeagle's job responsibilities included facilitating the acceptance of Virginia Tech students to the Governor's Fellows Program. The Collegiate Times article featured a large block quotation attributed to Yeagle, who was identified under the quotation as "Sharon Yeagle, Director of Butt Licking." This identifier had been inserted as a joke during the early drafting of the article and was not removed before final publication.

   Yeagle filed a libel suit in the circuit court of Montgomery County, Virginia, alleging that she had been defamed as a matter of law because the phrase "Director of Butt Licking" implied she had committed a crime against nature or, in the alternative, that she was deficient in performing her job duties. Both types of statements would be grounds for defamation per se under Virginia law. Yeagle also argued that the Collegiate Times article defamed her because it tended to lower her reputation in the local community. The court disagreed and dismissed the case. Yeagle v. Collegiate Times, 1997 Va. Cir. LEXIS 52 (Va. Cir. Ct. 1997). Yeagle appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court.

   On Feb. 27, 1998 (one year to the day after the lower court released its opinion), the Virginia Supreme Court affirmed the lower court's ruling. Yeagle v. Collegiate Times, 497 S.E.2d 136 (Va. 1998). The starting point for the Virginia Supreme Court's decision was Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1 (1990), in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that speech that does not contain a provably false factual connotation or statements that cannot reasonably be interpreted as stating actual facts about a person cannot form the basis for a defamation action. Under Milkovich, the statement made about Yeagle, despite its abusive and repulsive nature, was not defamatory.

   The Virginia Supreme Court first held that this statement was not defamatory per se. Yeagle had argued that the phrase "Director of Butt Licking" was defamatory per se for two reasons: First, it implied that she had committed a criminal offense involving moral turpitude under the Virginia sodomy statute. Second, it implied that she performed her job in an artificial or shallow manner, thus prejudicing her career. The court disagreed: "In this case, the phrase ODirector of Butt Licking' is no more than Orhetorical hyperbole.' The phrase is disgusting, offensive, and in extremely bad taste, but it cannot reasonably be understood as stating an actual fact about Yeagle's job title or her conduct, or that she committed a crime of moral turpitude." Yeagle, 497 S.E.2d at 138.

   The court also held that the statement simply did not defame Yeagle. She had argued that the statement injured her reputation and held her up to ridicule. However, as noted above, the court held that the statement could not be taken as stating an actual fact. Furthermore, the court held, "considering the phrase at issue in the context of the entire article, we find nothing which supports an inference that Yeagle performed her job with a lack of integrity or that she directed others to do so. The article was complimentary of Yeagle and the program with which she was associated." Id.

Tennessee Case

   A statement inserted in the dummy copy of a small-town newspaper in Tennessee resulted in major liability for that paper. In 1997, the Gallatin News Examiner, a tri-weekly paper, ran an article about a local high school soccer player named Garrett "Bubba" Dixon, Jr. In an early draft of the article the reporter, Nick DeLeonibus, inserted quotes attributed to the high school soccer coach charging Dixon, in extremely explicit language that would otherwise have been unfit for publication, of bestiality and unsanitary habits. This was an ongoing joke between reporter DeLeonibus and his editor in which such quotes would be inserted into the article by the reporter to see if the editor caught on. The joke bombed. The editor missed the quotes in this edition, the quotes remained in the final product, and both the soccer player and coach sued. Despite the newspaper's arguments that the statements could not be understood as statements of fact, a Tennessee jury awarded the player, Dixon, $550,000 in compensatory and $300,000 in punitive damages against the News Examiner. The coach received $150,000 in compensatory damages from the paper.