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Home > Blogs > Dayton Courts: Legal and crime news > Archives > 2009 > July > 02 > Entry
Ohio Supreme Court dimisses defamation lawsuit against Dayton Daily News
COLUMBUS — The Ohio Supreme Court has dismissed the lawsuit of a former Dayton law department official who claimed that the Dayton Daily News defamed him and his wife in a series of 1998 articles.
In May 2008, Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Michael L. Tucker dismissed the 1999 lawsuit filed by John and Cynthia Scaccia. The Ohio 2nd District Court of Appeals upheld Tucker’s ruling, so the Scaccia’s appealed to the Supreme Court.
On Wednesday, July 1, the high court declined jurisdiction and dismissed the case.
Tucker found that the Dayton Daily News didn’t defame the character of the Scaccias. At issue were articles that involved the couple’s acceptance of more than $500,000 in financial gifts from an elderly neighbor.
Tucker found that the newspaper demonstrated that the four news articles and one editorial in question were substantially true, and “truth, obviously, is an absolute defense to a defamation claim.”
The newspaper reported prosecutors’ assertion that the Scaccias exploited Charles Hoffman by accepting the gifts, but it also reported a probate court ruling that Hoffman was not exploited, Tucker noted.
“It may very well be the articles invoke an unflattering impression of Mr. and Mrs. Scaccia, but this impression is created by the circumstances of their relationship with Mr. Hoffman, not by any untrue or inaccurate reporting,” Tucker wrote.
Hoffman died Dec. 30, 2000.
John Scaccia was chief of the Dayton law department’s criminal division when the articles were published. He is now in private practice.
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