Maheu

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER GRANTING MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT IN FAVOR OF CARL BYOIR & ASSOCIATES AND RICHARD HANNAH

Acting for its client, Hughes Tool Co., the defendant Carl Byoir and Associates, a public relations firm, through its employee, defendant Richard Hannah, set up and arranged Howard Hughes’s telephonic press conference with seven reporters at the Sheraton-Universal Hotel on January 7, 1972.

Byoir and Hannah bring this motion for summary judgment claiming that, as a matter of law, they cannot be held liable for allegedly defamatory statements made during the course of that conference. The motion was heard by the Court on January 5, 1973. It appears to the Court from the pleadings, affidavits, and other documents on file in this cause that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact relevant to this motion. F.R.Civ.P. 56.

To obviate the need for each reporter bringing his own recording and stenographic equipment and to eliminate electronic and space problems that could be caused by multiple equipment and personnel, Hannah, as part of the advance arrangements, undertook to deliver to each reporter present a tape recording and transcript of the conference. The tapes…