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Huckabee v. Time Warner Entertainment Co.5/4/2000
On Petition for Review from the Court of Appeals for the Fourteenth District of Texas
Argued November 3, 1999
Chief Justice Phillips delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Justice Enoch, Justice Baker, Justice Abbott, Justice Hankinson, Justice O'Neill, and Justice Gonzales joined.
Justice Hecht filed a dissenting opinion.
Justice Owen did not participate in the decision.
We must decide whether a media defendant sued for defamation by a public official is entitled on the facts of this record to summary judgment on the issue of actual malice. Because the defendant produced evidence negating actual malice as a matter of law, and because the plaintiff did not produce controverting evidence raising a fact issue, we affirm the summary judgment granted by the court of appeals. 995 S.W.2d 152.
I.
When this claim arose, Charles Dean Huckabee was presiding judge of the 247th District Court of Harris County, which by statute gives preference to family law matters. See Tex. Gov't Code ยง 24.424. Judge Huckabee claims that Respondent, HBO, defamed him by broadcasting the documentary Women on Trial on its premium cable channel. This hour-long program chronicled four southeast Texas cases in which family courts granted custody of a child to the father after the mother accused the father of child abuse. Three of these cases arose in Harris County, and Judge Huckabee presided over two of them. Judge Huckabee principally claims that the documentary defamed him in its report on his decision regarding the custody of four-year-old Wayne Hebert. See In re the Marriage of Sandra Hebert and Michael Hebert, No. 84-13392, In re John Hebert and Wayne Hebert, Minor Children, No. 88-14873 (consolidated cases)(247th Dist. Ct., Harris County, Tex. Mar. 13-15, 1988)("Hebert").
The Hebert case began in 1988, when Sandra Hebert discovered that Wayne had sustained an injury to his penis. The day before, Wayne had returned from visiting Michael Hebert, his father and Sandra's ex-husband. Wayne had gone with Michael to visit his grandmother's home in Louisiana. Believing that Michael caused Wayne's injury, Sandra consulted with her friend Sherry Turner, a Houston police officer who specialized in sexual abuse cases. Turner, interviewing Wayne alone, videotaped Wayne's statement that Michael had injured him while taking a bath. In two other videotaped interviews, Wayne also told social worker Cheryl Bennett and Child Protective Services caseworker Wilma Smith that Michael caused the injury. After investigating further, Smith concluded that Wayne had been abused, but that the abuser could not be identified. Because Michael was a Houston police officer, the Houston Police Department's Internal Affairs Department also investigated the incident and likewise determined that the abuser could not be identified.
Alleging that Michael had abused Wayne, Sandra moved to modify the custody order to restrict Michael's visitation rights. After a three-day hearing in March 1988, Judge Huckabee rendered a temporary order that not only made Michael rather than Sandra the managing conservator of Wayne, but went on to deny Sandra all access to her child, even though Michael had not sought either of these changes. Sandra unsuccessfully sought a writ of mandamus from the court of appeals to overturn the temporary order. See Hebert v. Huckabee, No. A14-88-00511-CV, 1988 WL 73789 (Tex. App.- Houston [14th Dist.], July 14, 1988, orig. proceeding)(not designated for publication). She did not seek a subsequent modification of the order, and it was still in effect when Women on Trial was broadcast in 1992.
In late 1990, Lee Grant, the di
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