From the long opinion in Moore v. Cecil, decided today by Judge Elizabeth Branch, joined by Judges Jill Pryor and Frank Hull:
In 2017, Roy Moore ran as the Republican nominee in a special election to fill an open seat for one of Alabama's United States senators. In the final weeks before the election, multiple news outlets reported that several women had accused Moore of inappropriate sexual conduct with them when they were young. Senate Majority PAC ("SMP") grabbed onto the news reports and ran a campaign ad that stated, among other things, in separate individual frames that (1) "'Moore was actually banned from the Gadsden Mall … for soliciting sex from young girls,'" and (2) "[o]ne he approached 'was 14 and working as Santa's helper.'" [An underlying news report had "asserted that Moore approached Miller and told her she was pretty when she was 14 years old and working as Santa's helper and that Moore asked Miller out on dates two years late," so the argument appears to be that he had never approached a 14-year-old for sex. -EV] SMP ran the ad hundreds of times, and Moore eventually lost the election.
Moore sued SMP for defamation and false-light invasion of privacy under Alabama law, arguing in relevant part that the two statements above when read together created the false defamatory implication that he had solicited the 14-year-old girl working as Santa's helper for sex…. The jury found SMP liable for defamation and false-light invasion of privacy, and it awarded Moore $8.2 million in compensatory damages….
SMP appealed, and the Court of Appeals held in its favor:
