During his 1962 re-election campaign, Washington Democratic State Representative John Goldmark and his ex-Communist wife Sally were loudly labeled subversives by the weekly Tonasket Tribune and some local John Birchers. When Goldmark lost, he and his wife slapped a $225,000 libel suit on five of their critics. Last winter the trial jury denied recovery to Sally, but awarded $40,000 to Goldmark on the grounds that he was beaten by criticism that overreached the limits of fair comment (TIME, Jan. 31).
Last week the Goldmarks got a shock: Superior Court Judge Theodore Turner granted the defendants a new trial because "the case was submitted to the jury on a basis which the U.S. Supreme Court has declared is fundamentally wrong." Turner was referring to New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, a landmark decision holding that public officials can sue their critics only for a false statement "made with actual malice—that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard for whether it was false or not."