Texas Supreme Court answers questions in Patterson case

AUSTIN (BP)—The Supreme Court of Texas issued a ruling Feb. 14 on two questions raised in a case brought against former Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson and the seminary by a plaintiff known as Jane Roe.

On May 3, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit certified two questions for the Supreme Court of Texas:

• Can a person who supplies defamatory material to another for publication be liable for defamation?
• If so, can a defamation plaintiff survive summary judgment by presenting evidence that a defendant was involved in preparing a defamatory publication, without identifying any specific statements made by the defendant?

 “We answer yes to the two certified questions,” Justice Jane N. Bland wrote on the high court’s behalf.

“First, a person who supplies defamatory material to another for publication may be liable if the person intends or knows that the defamatory material will be published.

“Second, a plaintiff may survive summary judgment without identifying the specific statements the defendant made in supplying the defamatory material if the evidence is legally sufficient to support a finding that the defendant was the source of the defamatory content.”

Those two questions involve two items—a press release from Patterson’s lawyer and a letter submitted by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary donors to the seminary’s board of trustees.

The plaintiff, a former Southwestern Seminary student identified in the case as Jane Roe, claims that Patterson and the seminary failed to protect her from rape by another student and defamed her afterward.

The press release stated that Roe “had given … many contradictory statements.” The circuit court agreed the statement could be construed as defamatory, but asked the state supreme court to weigh in on whether a third party (i.e. Patterson) could be held liable for defamation.

In the instance of the letter to trustees, the role of Patterson to his then-chief of staff, Scott Colter, comes into question. At issue is whether Colter was acting as Patterson’s agent and “for the accomplishment of the objective of the agency.”

The case is now returned to the Fifth Circuit to proceed.

“To prove a claim for defamation for an identified publication, a plaintiff must show that the defendant supplied the defamatory content through direct or circumstantial evidence,” Bland wrote.

“That evidence need not establish verbatim the underlying provision of defamatory content so long as the evidence demonstrates that the defendant was a source of the identified statements alleged to be defamatory.

“We answer yes to the Fifth Circuit’s certified questions and leave the application of the law to the facts of this case to that court.”