## Facts

- Eric Waldbaum served as president and CEO of Greenbelt Consumer Services, Inc., a large consumer cooperative supermarket chain.
- During his tenure, Waldbaum participated publicly in debates over supermarket and consumer issues, including unit pricing and open dating, and he addressed related matters such as energy legislation and fuel allocation.
- He held meetings on these topics that were open to the public and the press, and he and Greenbelt received coverage in trade journals and general-interest publications.
- Greenbelt’s board removed Waldbaum after approximately five years.
- *Supermarket News*, a trade publication owned by Fairchild Publications, ran a story about Waldbaum’s ouster and stated Greenbelt had been losing money and retrenching.
- Waldbaum alleged the story was defamatory because it falsely portrayed him as a poor businessman through inaccurate statements about Greenbelt’s finances.
- In litigation, Waldbaum conceded he could not prove that Fairchild published the challenged statements with actual malice.

## Issues

1. Whether Waldbaum was a limited-purpose public figure regarding the controversy discussed in the article, requiring him to prove actual malice to recover for defamation.
2. Whether the article’s statements about Greenbelt’s financial condition and Waldbaum’s removal were sufficiently connected to the identified public controversy to bring the claim within limited-purpose public-figure status.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Fairchild Publications.
- The court held Waldbaum was a limited-purpose public figure with respect to a preexisting public controversy about supermarket practices and consumer-related reforms.
- Because Waldbaum admitted he could not prove actual malice, his defamation claim could not proceed.

## Legal Principles

- A limited-purpose public figure is a person who voluntarily thrusts himself to the forefront of a particular public controversy to influence its resolution, becoming a public figure for that limited range of issues.
- A “public controversy” must exist independently of the defamation litigation and must have been the subject of public discussion before the challenged publication.
- The analysis requires (1) identifying the public controversy, (2) determining whether the plaintiff assumed a role of special prominence in it, and (3) assessing whether the allegedly defamatory statements are germane to the plaintiff’s participation in that controversy.
- If the plaintiff is a public figure for the relevant controversy, the First Amendment requires proof of actual malice—knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for truth—to recover for defamation.
- Summary judgment is appropriate when the applicable constitutional standard governs and the plaintiff cannot produce evidence from which a reasonable jury could find actual malice.

## Conclusion

The court treated Waldbaum as a limited-purpose public figure because he sought prominence and influence in widely discussed consumer and supermarket policy disputes, and the challenged reporting about his leadership of Greenbelt fell within that sphere; his conceded inability to prove actual malice required judgment for the publisher.


Waldbaum v. Fairchild Publ'ns, Inc., 627 F.2d 1287 (D.C. Cir. 1980)