In oral arguments, a lawyer for Wynn argued that an AP article in
Attorney
“It simply didn’t use the verbatim words from the police report,” he said.
A state court judge dismissed AP from the defamation case in
Later, the same judge,
In March, Israel awarded Wynn the nominal damage amount of
The seven Supreme Court justices did not issue an immediate ruling on Wynn’s bid to revive the AP case.
Wynn, 78, resigned in
“The question for the court is very simple,” Wynn attorney
“That omission was because the fanciful story about a pink doll being born, or dropping out in a thick water bag, and the mother tearing it ... open with her teeth and blowing in its face would lead people to realize that the child wasn’t real,” Bice told the seven justices, referring to the police report. “If the child isn’t real, the corroboration isn’t real, and it casts the entire rape allegation in a far different light.”
Neither accuser was identified in the AP report. Their names and other identifiers were blacked out in documents obtained by AP under a public records request. The AP typically does not publish names of people who say they are victims of sexual assault, but Kuta agreed to be named in later AP news reports. The two accusers' claims could not have been investigated further at the time because
Bice also argued that Kuta's complaint was not an official record that should have been made public because
Bowman, the AP's lawyer, argued that "taking a police report starts the proceeding" and is sufficient to invoke fair reporting privilege.
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