A Georgia jury has awarded $100,000 to a woman who says she was defamed because a character in the book The Red Hat Club had a mix of her own traits and other false characteristics that depicted her as a promiscuous alcoholic.
The Nov. 19 jury award for plaintiff Vickie Stewart was far less than the minimum of $1 million in damages sought by her lawyer, Jeffrey Horst, according to the Fulton County Daily Report.
Stewart had contended novelist Haywood Smith, a childhood friend, had created the character SuSu with looks that resembled hers, with the same job as a flight attendant, and with similar experiences involving a second, conniving husband. But Stewart says she did not have other traits of the character, including a propensity to engage in casual sex and drink at work.
The jury did not award attorney fees to Stewart, and did not rule for her on an invasion of privacy claim against Smith and her publisher, St. Martin's Press. The defendants were represented by Peter Canfield of Dow Lohnes.
Canfield told the Fulton County Daily Report that the jury found for Stewart on the defamation charge because "they were essentially instructed that, in Georgia, modeling a fictional character after a real person is a strict liability offense."
"Under that standard, as the jury was instructed on Georgia law, a whole host of authors that we all know and are highly esteemed would be considered serial tortfeasors," he said. They include authors such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Irving, he said.
Both plaintiffs and defense lawyers say they know of no other successful libel cases in Georgia brought against works of fiction
"The Red Hat Club," released in 2003, hit No. 15 on The New York Times' best-seller list. Smith, who lives in Hall County, has since written other novels, including a sequel to "The Red Hat Club" titled "The Red Hat Club Rides Again."
...provided 39 "identifiable" traits common between Stewart and SuSu, including that both have red hair, green eyes and freckles and both smoke and have a smoker's cough. Both Stewart and SuSu are compulsively late and both had neighbors named Ed Johnson and Ellen Beaumont.
"We put on the stand people who knew Vickie pretty well who immediately recognized SuSu as depicting Vickie Stewart's life," Horst said. "But they said they didn't know if these other things were true, like whether she drank on the job or had sex with stud puppies."
"These people, who are Vickie's friends, could not distinguish fact from fiction," Horst said.
Another key piece of evidence was an e-mail Smith sent to a writing colleague who provided Smith with advice on her manuscripts. In the e-mail, Smith told the colleague that she had received an e-mail from the woman who was the basis for her fictional "slut" and that the woman was threatening to sue her.
During this month’s trial, an associate dean and professor of English from the University of Georgia testified that modeling fictional characters after real people was commonplace in literature.
Dean Hugh Ruppersburg cited Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night and The Great Gatsby and Flannery O’Connor’sGood Country People as but a few examples of authors basing their characters on real people.
"It’s very common for writers to draw on historical, cultural facts from the world they live in and place them in novels to make them seem as real as possible," the professor said.
Ruppersburg, a paid expert witness for the defense, said "from the first sentence, the first paragraph of (The Red Hat Club), it presented itself to me as a work of fiction."
Asked whether it might be difficult for readers to separate the real Vicki Stewart from the SuSu of the novel, the professor said that shouldn’t be the reader’s job.
"The reader’s job is to decide whether he or she believes that individual character behaves like a credible human being," Ruppersburg said.
Dean Hugh Ruppersburg cited Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night and The Great Gatsby and Flannery O’Connor’sGood Country People as but a few examples of authors basing their characters on real people.
"It’s very common for writers to draw on historical, cultural facts from the world they live in and place them in novels to make them seem as real as possible," the professor said.
Ruppersburg, a paid expert witness for the defense, said "from the first sentence, the first paragraph of (The Red Hat Club), it presented itself to me as a work of fiction."
Asked whether it might be difficult for readers to separate the real Vicki Stewart from the SuSu of the novel, the professor said that shouldn’t be the reader’s job.
"The reader’s job is to decide whether he or she believes that individual character behaves like a credible human being," Ruppersburg said.
During his cross-examination of the professor, plaintiff’s attorney Jeffrey Horst showed the witness an essay Smith wrote titled "Creating Memorable Characters."
Smith wrote, "Borrow from life, then embellish it all you want (disguising the people you use sufficiently to avoid problems, of course)."
***There are a few requirements to joining the Red Hat Society, Mack explained. You must be at least 50 years old and willing to have a good time. http://www.northjersey.com/community/70595812.html
Smith wrote, "Borrow from life, then embellish it all you want (disguising the people you use sufficiently to avoid problems, of course)."
***There are a few requirements to joining the Red Hat Society, Mack explained. You must be at least 50 years old and willing to have a good time. http://www.northjersey.com/community/70595812.html
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