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Talk Show Guest Grilling "Beyond Decency"?

Melinda Duckett

A talk-show tort case against CNN may hinge on whether host Nancy Grace's alleged “ambush” interview of a Florida woman who later committed suicide crossed the line between sensationalism and conduct exceeding “all bounds of decency.”

The parents of Melinda Duckett sued the network and Grace Nov. 21 under Florida's wrongful-death statute. Duckett, 22, killed herself Sept. 8, the day after taping a phone interview on “Nancy Grace” about the disappearance of her two-year-old son.

The complaint, filed in Lake County Circuit Court, does not allege that the interview directly caused Duckett's death. CNN did not broadcast the tape until after she committed suicide with a shotgun and suicide notes she left did not mention the show.

But plaintiffs Beth and William Eubank say Grace and her producers “did with malicious and contumacious disregard cause her emotional distress which was a cause or the proximate cause of her death by suicide.”

Liability for intentional infliction of emotional distress is “found only where the conduct has been so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency.” One court has described the requirements of the tort as “rigorous, and difficult to satisfy.”

According to the Eubanks, the producers misled Duckett into believing the interview would help in the search for her missing child when, in fact, “the real purpose of the show ... was to try to obtain a confession as to 'where she was' on the night that [the child] disappeared.” Duckett had told police that her son Trenton vanished from their Leesburg, Fla., home Aug. 27.

During the interview, Grace allegedly subjected the “anguished mother” to “severe interrogation, fist-pounding, and veiled accusations that she was responsible for her child T.D.’s disappearance and death.” Among other things, she repeatedly asked if Duckett had taken a polygraph test.

Grace and her producers “did commit extreme and outrageous conduct that goes beyond all bounds of decency tolerated in the community,” the suit says.

Despite the protections of the First Amendment, media organizations can be held liable for tortious newsgathering methods. As the New York Court of Appeals put it in Howell v. New York Post, 612 N.E.2d 699 (1993),

[T]o the extent that a journalist engages in such atrocious, indecent and utterly despicable conduct as to meet the rigorous requirements of an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim, recovery may be available.

In Galella v. Onassis, 487 F.2d 986 (1973), the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld emotional distress damages against a “paparazzo” photographer who had been harassing Jackie Onassis and her family.

But attitudes toward the media have become a lot more permissive than they were 33 years ago. And even Grace's methods may not be enough to satisfy the outrageousness test, particularly as her interview of Duckett raised legitimate issues about the mother's credibility.

Since Duckett's suicide, police have named her as a prime suspect in the disappearance of Trenton.

By Matthew Heller
11/25/06