D.A.R.E. America v. Rolling Stone Magazine

D.A.R.E. America and Glenn A. Levant, its founder and President, brought suit against Rolling Stone Magazine for defamation arising out of an article entitled “Truth & D.A.R.E.” and two Editor’s Notes about the article and its author, Stephen Glass, published in July and August 1998. The district court granted Rolling Stone’s motion for summary judgment in a published opinion. D.A.R.E. America v. Rolling Stone Magazine, 101 F.Supp.2d 1270 (C.D.Cal.2000). D.A.R.E. and Levant timely appeal.

They challenge the district court’s failure to consider their objections to certain of Rolling Stone’s evidentiary submissions and the court’s conclusions that Glass was not an employee of Rolling Stone, that the Editor’s Notes were not defamatory republications of the article, that “Truth & D.A.R.E.” was not published with actual malice, and that some of the facts in the article were substantially true.

The district court declined to consider the objections because they were not included with the opposition to summary judgment. Id. at 1279 n. 1. We do not need to decide whether this was correct, for even if the objections were timely, D.A.R.E. and Levant’s brief on appeal does not argue how…