Journalist Wins Defamation Suit Brought By Someone Who Didn’t Like Actual Facts Being Reported

There are few moves that make reporting more credible than suing the reporter for defamation and losing. It not only revives the negative reporting that might have faded into the white noise of constant internet churn, but also exposes the plaintiff as someone unable to handle being the subject of factual reporting.

The Streisand Effect, even if somewhat muted, is still the end result of efforts like these. ProPublica’s reporting on the rise and fall and even more falling by Jide Zeitlin, the one-time CEO of Tapestry, didn’t make Zeitlin happy, despite being more than happy to speak to reporter William Cohan on the record.

ProPublica’s article, written by Cohan, contained comments from Zeitlin himself, as well as plenty of documentation of his somewhat unsavory actions. No one should be in a hurry to live to regret things, but this is certainly one of those things Zeitlin is unhappy to have lived to regret:

Zeitlin, then the CEO of Tapestry — parent company of luxury brands such as Coach, Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman — went so far as to urge me to dig into his background. “I’m pretty certain you’re not going to find any paper trail on me playing those kinds of games,” Zeitlin said.

Thus encouraged, Cohan dug. A few months later, Zeitlin resigned as CEO for “personal reasons.” Those reasons are open to speculation. But Cohan brought facts, links, and plenty of documentation to his coverage of Zeitlin’s personal and professional collapse. This was only part of it:

Some problems seemed like benign business stumbles: For example, a company that he ran in India went bankrupt. But then there was what appeared to be almost a past second life for Zeitlin. Working under an alias, he took photos, many sexual, at least some involving nudity, of women in a studio just feet from where his wife and children lived. He had what he now acknowledges was an “inappropriate relationship” with one of the women he photographed. That life had surfaced in 2009, hindering a chance for him to enter government service, only to be publicly left behind — until today.

2009 probably seemed like a lifetime ago for Zeitlin, who found his past unearthed for this 2020 article. But that past was enough to see him contractually unseated as the head of Tapestry, having apparently lied while signing his contract with the company.

In the end, Zeitlin’s downfall occurred before a word was published. He had some common language in his employment contract in which he stipulated that he had never been the subject of any allegation of “harassment, discrimination, retaliation, or sexual or other misconduct” and agreed that “any act or omission” on his part that could have a “material adverse effect” on Tapestry and “its reputation” would be considered “cause” for his termination. Only days after Tapestry’s lawyers began asking questions, Zeitlin stepped down.

If Zeitlin didn’t want his past exposed, he had options. First, he didn’t need to dare Cohan to dig into his past. Then he had to do nothing more than walk away for “personal reasons” before any of this was made public.

Instead, he chose to sue Cohan for reporting (apparently truthfully) on his past activities. Claiming this 2020 article was defamatory, Zeitlin sued Cohan in a New York state court, apparently hoping that reviving interest in his past would somehow make Cohan poorer and discourage others from reporting on incidents he not only publicly acknowledged, but were apparently well-documented.

As ProPublica reports in a short article, Cohan is off the hook, having had this lawsuit dismissed by the New York state appeals court. The ruling [PDF] is equally brief, primarily because Zeitlin doesn’t have anything approaching a legitimate case.

These are the claims:

Plaintiff asserts causes of action for defamation per se arising from three statements in the article: first, that plaintiff had “used deception” to lure a married woman into an “unwanted romantic relationship’; second, that he had later conducted a campaign of “terrorization“ against the woman; and third, that plaintiff had engaged in “sexual perversions” such as photographing “alarmingly young girls” and viewing websites where members could “bid” on young teenagers, and that his. predilections were known to “the business world.”

Yikes, if true. And it’s quite possibly true, or at least not so demonstrably false to survive a motion to dismiss, much less the application of the state’s anti-SLAPP law by the lower court. As the lower court pointed out, the plaintiff was a public figure and the article covered issues of public interest.

The motion court properly held that the article addressed issues of “public interest” within the protection of New York’s amended anti-strategic lawsuit against public participation (anti SLAPP) law (Civil Rights Law § 76-a, as amended by L 2020, ch 250). The article’s primary purpose was to probe the reasons that plaintiff, a wellknown business executive and former nominee to a United Nations post, had abruptly resigned from his position as CEO of Tapestry.

The Appeals Court says this argument is a non-starter, as is his subsequent argument that this ProPublica article was somehow an invasion of his privacy despite Zeitlin making public statements about these incidents.

We reject plaintiffs efforts to characterize the article as an invasion into the “purely private” matter of his former romantic relationship with a married woman, especially because it was plaintiff himself who aired the existence of the relationship to explain why he was resigning.

Yeah, you can’t sue over the airing of dirty laundry when you’re the one doing the initial airing of said laundry. You also can’t claim that things you wish were still private are now a matter of public interest now that the public appears to be interested.

Actual malice (the legal standard for cases involving public figures)? Not here, says the Appeals Court. Context matters, even if Zeitlin thinks selected quotes should be judged on their own merits, divorced from the surrounding reporting.

The subject article flatly contradicts the existence of actual malice with respect to the statement in the article that plaintiff had “used deception” to lure a woman into an unwanted romantic relationship. Reviewing the statement in context… it becomes. clear that, in fact, defendant was not himself reporting that plaintiff had been deceptive in his dealings with this woman. Rather, the article makes clear that defendant asked plaintiff about a decade-old article in which the woman alleged that plaintiff had been deceptive. Defendant then immediately reported, in the very next sentence, that plaintiff denied the allegation.

The rest of Zeitlin’s arguments were somehow even worse. And they too involved stripping the statements of context to make it appear as though Cohan was unconcerned about known facts and wished to deliberately mislead readers.

The Appeals Court won’t be misled, however. And it goes after Zeitlin again for misrepresenting ProPublica’s reporting.

We also reject plaintiffs allegations of actual malice as to the two other statements, which were not made in the article proper but by the woman in a 2009 email sent to the office of a Senator regarding plaintiff’s nomination to the United Nations post. Plaintiff’s allegations ignore how defendant handled the discrepant accounts of plaintiff and the woman — that is, by including a hyperlink to the email itself so that readers could read it themselves and interpret its contents (see id.). Further, defendant included, in the article’ text, not only the woman’s accusations but plaintiff’s denials. In any event, plaintiffs allegations of actual malice rest largely on his own statements — for example, his assertion that it is “inherently improbable” that he would have “terroriz{ed]” the woman or that he would have engaged in “pedophilia” (a word that does not, in fact, appear in either the article or the email).

A resounding loss. And one delivered in less than five pages. Zeitlin should have just left it alone. Instead, he decided to direct more attention to a three-year-old article with his lawsuit, filed more than a year after it was published. Then he decided to appeal his first loss, assuring continued interest more than three years after its publication. Finally, he tried to sue over actual facts, his own statements, and things the journalist never even said. And for that, he might see himself on the hook for Cohan’s legal fees, thanks to the state’s anti-SLAPP law.

That’s the way it should be. And that’s why we need a federal anti-SLAPP law. Reporters shouldn’t have to defend themselves in court for delivering factual reporting. It should be bad faith litigants being discouraged from attempting to punish people for making things public they’d rather keep secret, rather than the other way around. A federal law would discourage forum shopping and hold litigants to the same standard, ensuring protected speech is truly protected.