Subject: A legal matter
To: Jim Paine <jwpaine@thorby.com>
From: Bruce Johansen <bjohansen@mail.unomaha.edu>

I have now read the material related to me in [pirateballerina.com]. The First Amendment gives us all the right to engage in biased argument. However, there are legal limits, and in one instance the authors of the site violate them.  This is the unsupported allegation that Mr. Churchill and I have engaged in some sort of "quid pro quo." A quid pro quo is specific set of events leading to a mutually agreed upon outcome, sometimes involving money. In this case, there has never been any such agreement.

The author may be referring to a positive review of a book I edited (Enduring Legacies, 2004) by Mr. Churchill. I have written 25 books and they have been reviewed by many people, nicely and not so nicely. In this case (and this is legally very important) I did not request the review. Thus, many suggestion of quid pro quo is defamatory and false. I also believe that this comment qualifies as libel under the "actual malice" standard of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling New York Times v. Sullivan [376 US 254 (1964)]. Actual malice in this case refers to defamatory falsehood which is published with knowledge that it is false, the standard for a successful lawsuit by a public figure.

In view of this, I strongly suggest that this website refrain from suggesting any quid pro quo between Mr. Churchill and myself. I want this statement removed. To do otherwise will put the authors of the site in serious legal jeopardy.

Bruce E. Johansen
Frederick W. Kayser Research Professor
University of Nebraska at Omaha