United Medical Laboratories, Inc. v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc.

The District Court dismissed on summary judgment, 258 F.Supp. 735 , an action in diversity jurisdiction for a claim of libel under Oregon law. We affirm the judgment, but upon another ground than those on which the court predicated its decision.

As involved here, the defamation claim was one asserted by United Medical Laboratories, Inc., (herein United Labs), a mail order clinical testing laboratory, of Portland, Oregon, against Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., Walter Cronkite, one of its featured newscasters and commentators, and Jay McMullen, one of its producers, (herein collectively CBS).

The basis of the claim was a series of national television broadcasts, radio broadcasts and press releases engaged in by CBS — each three in number— primarily reporting on the inaccuracies in the results of some tests of clinical specimens which CBS had had made, through some cooperating physicians, by 22 mail order laboratories throughout the country, and commenting on the significance of the inaccuracies as questions of risk to personal health and lack of public regulation.

The publications gave individual identification to only one of the laboratories by which the tests had been…