From Judge John Cronan's decision Tuesday in Goldfarb v. Channel One Russia(S.D.N.Y.):
Plaintiff Alex Goldfarb claims that Defendant Channel One Russia … libeled him and intentionally inflicted emotional distress upon him through statements made during four television programs it broadcast in 2018. Those statements, Goldfarb claims, either asserted or implied six claims about him that constitute libel per se: that he murdered Alexander Litvinenko …, a Russian dissident who was killed in London in 2016; that he murdered his own wife; that he is a CIA operative; that he persuaded Marina Litvinenko …, Litvinenko's widow, to give false testimony to a parliamentary inquiry that was carried out in the U.K. into Litvinenko's death (the "Owen Inquiry"); that he and Litvinenko together operated an illegal business helping criminal asylum-seekers; and that he conspired with Boris Berezovsky, an exiled Russian oligarch, to defraud the U.K. into granting asylum to Berezovsky….
Now before the Court is Channel One's motion for summary judgment on all causes of action in Goldfarb's Complaint and on all of its counterclaims…. For reasons that follow, Channel One's motion for summary judgment is granted in part and denied in part. Because an accusation of membership in the CIA is not defamatory on its face, and because Goldfarb has not alleged any extrinsic facts that would make that accusation defamatory, his claim that Channel One libeled him as a CIA member is dismissed. Channel One's motion is denied in all other respects.
A reasonable person could understand certain statements that were made on Channel One's broadcasts to imply that Goldfarb killed his wife, and a false accusation that Goldfarb influenced Litvinenko's wife to lie to the Owen Inquiry constitutes libel per se. Further, when considered in context, the statements Channel One broadcast were statements of fact rather than of opinion. And because the evidence disclosed in the record raises a genuine issue of fact as to whether Channel One acted with actual malice, the question of actual malice must be resolved at trial….
I focus in this post on the question "whether Channel One's broadcasts accused Goldfarb of killing his wife":
