Hughes

*933 Opinion

INTRODUCTION

A Vanity Fair magazine article quoted defendant and respondent Albert Hughes, Jr., 1 as saying, “Our dad’s a pimp.” A USA Today article quoted defendant and respondent Allen Hughes, Albert Jr.’s twin brother, as saying their father “dabbled in the pimptorial arts.” The Hughes brothers maintained the statements were true. Their father, plaintiff and appellant Albert Hughes, Sr., sued Albert Jr. and Allen for defamation, claiming the statements were false. A jury found that the Hughes brothers did not make defamatory statements.

On appeal, Albert Sr. raises numerous claims of error, including error in the special verdict, insufficiency of the evidence, errors in the jury instructions, and errors in rulings on discovery motions and motions in limine. In the published portion of this opinion, we discuss Albert Sr.’s contention that the statement, “Our dad’s a pimp,” connotes a present, rather than a past, fact, and therefore Albert Jr., in order to establish truth as a defense, had to prove his father was acting as a pimp at the time the allegedly defamatory statement was made. Albert Sr. claims that the evidence of alleged pimping activity years earlier…