And while the settlement ended matters for CNN, trouble was brewing for the Associated Press. In reporting on the CNN settlement, the AP said, "Young's business helped smuggle people out of Afghanistan, but said he worked exclusively with deep-pocketed outside sponsors like Bloomberg and Audible." And the word "smuggle" caused Young to head back to court for a brand new defamation suit. But this time, he was not so lucky. A Florida State Circuit Court granted the AP's motion to dismiss. It also required Young to pay the AP's legal fees under Florida's anti-SLAPP statute.
The court found that Young's lawsuit lacked merit for several reasons. First, it found that Florida's "fair report" privilege barred the suit. The "fair report" privilege allows reporting on information contained in public records so long as the report is a "fair and accurate" representation of the record. In this case, AP's report fairly and accurately captured the proceedings at the CNN trial. While no one used the word "smuggle" at the CNN trial, the court described the gist of the trial: "Young was never located in Afghanistan, but he instead had a contact that he used to arrange, coordinate and plan evacuation services. He used, and in turn his contact used, encrypted communications with operatives on the ground . . . Young only knew one person who was his contact and did not even know who the operatives on the ground were . . . . Once contact was made with the evacuees, the operatives would move them covertly to safe houses to avoid detection by the Taliban."
In the Court's view, that paragraph could be summarized with the eight-word phrase "Young's business helped smuggle people out of Afghanistan." Thus, the AP fairly and accurately reported on the trial.
The Court also ruled that the AP statement wasn't "defamation per se," as Young alleged. A statement is defamatory per se if it accuses someone of committing a crime. Young argued that in saying Young "smuggled," the AP was accusing him of a crime. The Court wasn't buying it. In its view, AP used the word "smuggle" "to describe Young's work to 'rescue' endangered and desperate Afghans – the antithesis of accusing him of a crime." The Court used an analogy – if someone accused John of "smuggling" a candy bar into a movie theater to avoid the concession stand, "no reasonable reader would believe that John committed a crime." On this basis, the Court dismissed Young's complaint.
The Court referred to Young's case against the AP as a "sequel" to the CNN case. And it noted, with sequels, "[o]ften times, the story line is forced, new characters are not properly developed, inconsistencies arise between the original plot and the sequel's, or the writers and producers are just lazy trying to cash in on a previously successful idea. These same things can be said of this case." Wow. I imagine Young didn't expect the Judge to be Roger Ebert. But in any event, he got a firm thumbs down.