A Columbus tv station must pay damages to three siblings it defamed by falsely describing them as “robbers” of an 8-year-old’s hoverboard.

A Columbus tv station must pay damages to three siblings it defamed by falsely describing them as “robbers” of an 8-year-old’s hoverboard.

A Columbus television station defamed three siblings by describing them as “robbers” of an 8-year-old’s hoverboard when it rewrote information provided by Columbus police, an Ohio appeals court ruled. The TV station must pay the family damages.

Last week, the Ohio Supreme Court declined to consider an appeal by WBNS-TV of a ruling that it must pay damages for defaming Aaron, Aaronana, and Arron Anderson in a 2015 broadcast. The case’s long procedural history includes a 2019 Supreme Court decision, which remanded the case to the Tenth District Court of Appeals for further proceedings.

The Tenth District, in turn, remanded the case to the Franklin County Common Pleas Court. In September 2023, a jury found WBNS acted negligently by publishing inaccurate statements about the Andersons. However, the jury ruled that the station didn’t act with “actual malice” and concluded the Andersons weren’t entitled to any damages from WBNS.

The siblings appealed that decision to the Tenth District, which ruled in their favor in October 2024, and found that damages could be awarded. Because the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, the Tenth District’s decision stands.

Police Seek Public’s Help To Solve Robbery
In January 2016, the Columbus Police Department sent an information sheet to WBNS and other Columbus media outlets describing a hoverboard robbery that occurred a few months earlier at a local waterpark. The police reported the suspects put a gun to a girl’s head and demanded the hoverboard. Accompanying the description were two photographs. One was a grainy shot from the parking lot showing two men near the child. The other was a photograph from inside the entryway to the waterpark that depicted the Anderson siblings. The information sheet asked for help identifying the people in the photographs “who may be involved” in the robbery.

WBNS prepared a 5 a.m. “CrimeTracker 10”  broadcast. The segment showed the picture of the Andersons while stating a “girl was riding her hoverboard when robbers went up to her, [p]ut a gun to her head, and took it. Columbus Police say suspects — seen here — took off in a PT Cruiser.” An hour later, the station broadcast another segment, showing the same picture of the three while stating, “Columbus Police hope you recognize these two men who robbed an 8-year-old girl at gunpoint!” On the station’s website, the picture was published with text stating, “The suspects put a gun to the 8-year-old girl’s head….”

Nanita Williams, the mother of Aaron, Aaronana, and Arron, saw the early morning stories, awakened her family, and took her children to the police station. After four hours of questioning, the police determined the siblings had not been involved in the crime. The department then released a statement to the media stating that the people in the photograph weren’t involved in the robbery. WBNS removed the picture of the Andersons from their website.

Family Files Lawsuit
The Anderson family filed a lawsuit against WBNS, arguing they were defamed and making other claims. WBNS asked the Franklin County Common Pleas Court to grant summary judgment in its favor, arguing the Andersons could not prove an essential point in their lawsuit, which was that the station was negligent in its reporting. The trial court sided with WBNS. The Andersons appealed to the Tenth District, which ruled there “is no question that WBNS defamed some of the Andersons” because the stories accused the Andersons of being robbers, not just suspects, based on the police department documents that only indicated the Andersons were suspects.

WBNS appealed to the Supreme Court. In the December 2019 decision, the Court cited its 1979 Lansdowne v. Beacon Journal Publishing Co. decision, finding that when private citizens, such as the Andersons, claim they were defamed, they have the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence the statement about them was false. They also have to prove the defendant was at least negligent in publishing it.

The Court found the Tenth District didn’t apply that standard and remanded the case. The Tenth District determined the case should be considered in trial court and a jury should decide the outcome.

Trial Judge Changes Standard That Family Needed To Meet
A visiting judge conducted the trial and told the parties that WBNS was entitled to “qualified privilege” because the matter, a police investigation into the armed robbery of a child, was a matter of great public interest. He told the Andersons’ attorneys that they had to prove the station acted with actual malice, a higher standard of proof than negligence. The Andersons’ attorneys responded that they only needed to prove negligence because the siblings are private persons, and it didn’t matter if the incident was of great public interest.

The judge instructed the jury to answer both questions: Was WBNS negligent in describing the siblings as robbers? And did the station act with actual malice, described as knowing the statement is false, or acting with reckless disregard of whether it was false? The jury found the station was negligent but did not act with actual malice. The jury awarded no damages to the Andersons.

Writing for the Tenth District, Judge Kristin Boggs found the judge shouldn’t have applied the qualified privilege standard. WBNS argued the station was accurately summarizing information from the police department, which turned out to be wrong. The Tenth District noted that in past Ohio cases, courts have granted privilege to news stations that have accurately reported false information from police and other government officials. But the appeals court found that wasn’t the case here.

“WBNS did not receive false information from the Columbus Division of Police. Nor did it accurately report only the information contained in the Media Information report,” Judge Boggs wrote. “The Media Information report described the individuals in the hallway photograph only as persons ‘who may have been involved’ in the waterpark robbery, but WBNS described Aaron and Arron as the ‘two men who robbed an 8-year-old girl at gunpoint’ and as the ‘suspects’ who ‘took off in a P-T [C]ruiser’ after committing the robbery.”

Because the Andersons did not have to prove WBNS acted with actual malice, they only needed to prove the station acted negligently, the appeals court stated. Since the jury already found they acted negligently, the case was returned to the trial court to determine the amount of damages to award the family.

Judges Besty Luper Schuster and Carly M. Edelstein joined Judge Boggs’ opinion.

Anderson v. WBNS-TV, 2024-Ohio-4880.

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