88 A.D.2d 550 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1982
—• Order of the Supreme Court, New York County (Lane, J.), entered December 15, 1981, which granted defendants’ motion to dismiss the first cause of action (prima facie tort, malicious interference with business and injurious falsehood) and the second cause of action (abuse of process), but denied the motion as to the third cause of action (defamation), is modified, on the law, with costs to defendants, to the extent of dismissing the third cause of action and otherwise affirmed. The instant action was instituted by plaintiffs, who are both attorneys, to recover compensatory and punitive damages for alleged injuries to their personal and business reputations arising out of the publication of two articles on November 4, 1977 and January 7, 1980. These articles appeared in the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by defendant Dow Jones and Company, and were written by defendant Burt Schorr, who is a reporter with the newspaper. The stories concerned a lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against a number of defendants, including plaintiffs Sprecher and Roth, which charged fraud in connection with the sale and registration of certain stock. The first article reported the commencement of the SEC action, while the second was written at the conclusion of the litigation. In their amended verified complaint, dated March 12,1980, plaintiffs assert that the 1977 story was “extremely deprecatory and inflammatory” and that the 1980 article was “false, misleading and inflammatory” and “false and defamatory”. They maintain that the stories were the result of a conspiracy between Schorr and an SEC official to destroy the plaintiffs’ reputation and business and were not published for any legitimate newsworthy reason. In that regard, they allege