Braun v. Soldier of Fortune Magazine, Inc.
United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
968 F.2d 1110 (1992)
- Written by Rose VanHofwegen, JD
Facts
Soldier of Fortune Magazine, Inc. (defendant) ran a personal ad listing professional mercenary Michael Savage as a “Gun for Hire” looking for jobs. Bruce Gastwirth and John Moore responded to the ad, wanting to murder Gastwirth’s business partner, Richard Braun. Savage, Moore, and a third man, Sean Doutre, went to Braun’s home, where Doutre killed Braun. Braun’s sons (plaintiffs) sued the magazine for negligence, arguing the ad solicited the crime. Savage testified that he did not intend to solicit illegal jobs and got one legitimate job as a bodyguard, but most of the 30 to 40 people who called each week wanted him to murder, assault, or kidnap someone. The judge instructed the jury that it could hold the magazine liable only if the ad posed an unreasonable risk of harm to the public that a reasonably prudent publisher would have identified. The jury awarded Braun’s sons $4.3 million, and the magazine appealed, arguing that a publisher could not be liable for an ad that did not explicitly solicit crime without unduly restricting the press’s freedom of speech. The magazine also argued that the ad did not proximately cause Braun’s murder because unforeseen criminal acts of third parties intervened as a superseding cause that broke any causal connection between the ad and Braun’s murder.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Anderson, J.)
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