Malice

Ruthann Aron's candidacy for the U.S. Senate was torpedoed by an opponent who knew she was not a criminal but repeatedly called her one, her lawyers told an Anne Arundel Circuit Court jury yesterday.Ms. Aron is asking jurors to find that William E. Brock, a former U.S. senator and secretary of labor, defamed her at a news conference and in advertisements broadcast in the closing days of their 1994 race for the Republican nomination for Senate.Ms. Aron, a Potomac lawyer and real estate developer, alleges that by distorting the facts about two civil suits filed against her, Mr. Brock went beyond the acceptable rules for campaign rhetoric, ruining her reputation and costing her the election.

In a decision that could cost plaintiffs in Maryland's asbestos litigation millions of dollars, the state's highest court yesterday virtually eliminated any chance for asbestos victims to recover punitive damages.Reviewing a case heard in Baltimore, the Maryland Court of Appeals reversed punitive damage awards totaling $3.5 million for three asbestos victims -- and barred more than 8,500 plaintiffs awaiting future "minitrials" from such awards.What's more, lawyers in the case said that the ruling means that other asbestos plaintiffs will have almost no chance of winning punitive awards unless they uncover startling new evidence against asbestos companies.

ANNAPOLIS -- As everybody with white skin knows, affirmative action is no longer needed. The country's enlightened and colorblind now, in case Bill Clinton hadn't noticed. All he had to do was walk along Main Street here, and look at a piece of America when it's left to its own benevolent devices.Last week the president said affirmative action's been "good for America." Everyone with white skin knows this is a lie. It's been good for black people maybe, because they've gotten jobs that were denied them for their entire lives, but white people will assure you the country's changed now, we're all pure at heart and we don't need the government forcing any more enlightenment down our throats and taking away white people's jobs in the process.

As Congress begins considering sweeping reform of the nation's legal system, at least one element of the package is already in place and shaping the practice of law in Maryland."

BEHIND the lovely, turbulent spleen-venting that is the argument over political correctness lies something far more authentically American than the spirit of goodness and love for constitutional freedoms which ostensibly motivate the disputants.That something is malice for one's fellow man.For those opposed to P.C. doctrines, what a joy it is to tee off on those fascistic language suppressors who are out to destroy freedom of speech by punishing people for Badspeak.For the P.C. champions, what a delight to flail away with gusto, labeling the unfair, the benighted and the wrong-minded with some of the most poisonous words in the lexicon of what passes for English in this era of galloping illiteracy.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the movie theaters, when you thought the humane, the compassionate, the earnest American movie industry had committed itself to making movies that reflected the very best that we could be, the very most politically correct we could aspire to, along comes a batch of films right in a row that are as politically correct as .44 Magnums.So you have to ask yourself: Do you feel lucky, punk?In other words: Is it a trend or is it an accident?Well, who knows?

Rumor has it the studio had a great deal of difficulty comin up with a trailer for "Malice." And you can see why: The movie has too many elements to fit into the 2-minute, hyper-dramatized, foreshortened form of the preview. But . . . that's not bad. That's good.Because that gets at "Malice's" cardinal and most welcome virtue: At no time do you know where it's going but when it gets there, you realize it could have gone no other place. In fact it's an astonishment: a dense, vivid and suspenseful thriller that feels wholly fresh and that restores a value missing from American movies since at least "Body Heat" of 12 years past -- cleverness.

One of the most hotly contested issues at the General Assembly this session has been a proposal to impose on victims harsh burdens of proof and evidence in order to collect punitive damages from corporate wrongdoers.It would require that plaintiffs not only prove that a company engaged in heinous conduct, but that a manager or principal of the company involved committed, knew about or sanctioned that wrongdoing. Awards would have to be commensurate with the harm caused.Proponents claim this bill would add a measure of predictability to punitive damage awards, which on occasion are outrageous.

The Supreme Court has ruled that a journalist may be sued for deliberately misquoting someone in a way that results "in a material change in the meaning conveyed by the statement." Such an alteration is evidence of "actual malice" -- knowledge that one's reporting is false or a reckless disregard for whether the article is true or false. "Actual malice" is the standard journalists writing about public figures have lived with for a generation in the area of defamation.All nine justices agreed the case should go to trial, that the First Amendment does not apply.

Every few months a Hollywood celebrity walks into Vincent Chieffo's law office in Los Angeles, angrily waving a copy of one of the supermarket tabloids, those weekly newspapers that offer readers a feast of gossip, scandal and believe-it-or-not phenomena.Asserting that an article is not true, the celebrity asks about suing the paper. Mr. Chieffo, a veteran entertainment lawyer, usually responds with what he calls "the facts of life" in the never-ending battle between these publications and those whose lives provide the fodder for each week's blaring headlines.