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The following story will move Saturday as this week's Sunday Spotlight, a feature showcasing the best off-the-news enterprise in the AP report:
SUPREME-LANDMARK LIBEL CASE
Singer Courtney Love hadn't been born and tweets were exclusively for birds when The New York Times won a landmark libel case at the Supreme Court in 1964. But when a California jury decided recently that Love shouldn't have to pay $8 million for a troublesome tweet about her former lawyer, she became just the latest person to lean on New York Times v. Sullivan, a case decided 50 years ago Sunday, and the cases that followed and expanded it. The Sullivan case, as it known among lawyers, stemmed from Alabama officials' efforts to hamper the newspaper's coverage of civil rights protests in the South. The decision made it difficult for public officials to win lawsuits — and hefty money judgments — over published false statements that damaged their reputations. By Jessica Gresko. UPCOMING: 990 words by 10 a.m. Saturday, photos.
The AP
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