New York Times Co. v. Sullivan

Sullivan (plaintiff), a Montgomery, Alabama city commissioner overseeing the police department, sued the New York Times (defendant) for libel after it ran an advertisement containing some false or exaggerated claims about his police force's treatment of civil-rights protesters and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At trial, the judge instructed the jury that the statements were libelous per se and that damages were warranted so long as they were understood to concern Sullivan, and the jury awarded him $500,000; the Alabama Supreme Court affirmed, and the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari.