Barnette v. Wilson

The question certified to this Court actually involves two separate issues. The first issue is purely a question of proximate cause, namely, whether a police chief, who conducts a press conference to explain to attending representatives of the radio and newspaper media how an undercover "sting operation" had resulted in the dismissal of police officers in his employ, may be liable for the subsequent dissemination by those media of defamatory remarks the police chief made about the terminated officers at the press conference. The second distinct issue is whether the police chief's defamatory…