Atlanta Humane Society v. Mills [1]

The Atlanta Humane Society (AHS) and its director, Bill Garrett, sued Kathi Mills for allegedly defamatory statements made on an Internet bulletin board.  In 2001, an Atlanta television station aired a "Whistleblower 2" series investigating AHS, which criticized AHS's management of county animal control, particularly its euthanasia policies, its failure to place animals for adoption, and its failure to assist in investigating animal cruelty cases.  Garrett was interviewed for the series.  In response to the television series, Mills, an animal rights advocate and publisher of the Kitty Village [2] website, posted critical statements about Garrett and AHS on a Yahoo! group chat room for people in the local rescue community.

After AHS and Garrett filed suit, Mills moved to strike the complaint under Georgia's anti-SLAPP statute and also moved for summary judgment.  The trial court denied the motion to strike, granted summary judgment against AHS, and denied summary judgment against Garrett.  On appeal, the Court of Appeal of Georgia reversed the trial court, holding that it should have granted Mills' anti-SLAPP motion because it found that Mills had been commenting on a matter of public concern.  The Supreme Court of Georgia reversed and remanded for further consideration of whether the plaintiffs' complaint was falsely verified. 

On remand, the Court of Appeals of Georgia put aside the anti-SLAPP issue and ruled that the trial court had properly granted summary judgment against AHS because it was a governmental entity unable to sue for defamation.  It also ruled that the trial court should have granted summary judgment against Garrett because he was a limited-purpose public figure and had not produced evidence of actual malice.  In particular, the court explained that Mills was entitled to rely on the content of news reports:

Private citizens are not required to investigate the investigators to ensure that programs aired by a major television station are accurate and correct before making comments based on those programs, and failure to do so does not amount to malice in a constitutional sense.

Atlanta Humane Soc'y v. Mills, 618 S.E.2d 18, 26 (Ga. Ct. App. 2005). The appellate court therefore reversed the trial court insofar as it had denied summary judgment against Garrett and dismissed the case in its entirety.