The four women and two men walked silently to their red leather armchairs in Room 110 of the Federal District Court Building in lower Manhattan. As dozens of reporters and spectators listened intently, the clerk asked Jury Foreman Richard Zug, an IBM computer specialist, if the panel had come to a decision. “We have,” replied Zug. Reading carefully from the verdict form, Zug announced, “On actual malice: to the question, Has the plaintiff proved by clear and convincing evidence that a person or persons at Time Inc. knew that the defamatory statement was false or had serious doubts to its truth?, we find the answer is no.” In that legalese, the jury rendered its decision that TIME had not libeled General Ariel Sharon in a paragraph in its Feb. 21, 1983, cover story about an official Israeli report on the 1982 slaughter of hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. After giving that verdict, however, Zug read a statement on behalf of the jury. It said that “certain TIME employees, particularly Correspondent David Halevy, acted negligently and carelessly in reporting and verifying the information which ultimately found its way into the published paragraph of interest in this case.” “We went through this long, hard fight because we felt a principle was at stake,” said TIME Managing Editor Ray Cave outside the courthouse. “The principle was, if you think your story is right, then you better defend it. We are pleased with the verdict.” Sharon, on the other hand, insisted that he had been vindicated in his $50 million libel suit against TIME. “I came here to prove that TIME magazine lied,” he said. “We managed to prove there was a clear defamation. We came over here to prove that they have done it with negligence and with carelessness. Altogether, I feel that we have achieved what brought us here to this country.” One reason both sides were able to claim victory was that, in an unusual procedure, Federal Judge Abraham Sofaer had asked the jury to disclose its partial findings step by step instead of deciding all elements of the case before announcing a verdict. On their third day of deliberations, the jurors said that they interpreted the disputed paragraph, which reported on discussions Sharon had held with Lebanese Christian Phalangists before the massacre, as having a defamatory meaning. Two days later they announced their conclusion that the contested passage was false. In deciding last week for TIME on “actual malice,” the third and most complex point, the jurors determined that the magazine had not published the paragraph knowing it was false or with serious doubts about its truth. That decision ended the trial in TIME’s favor. “This was a meticulous jury, which examined the evidence that it had,” said TIME’s Cave. “Our problem is that we don’t think they would have come to these conclusions if testimony that should have been before them had been before them. Nevertheless, we regret we gave the jury any reason to find TIME negligent or careless. There was without question one error in the story.”
