Newly Accepted Civil Cases at Wisconsin Supreme Court, Including Biskupic Slander Case

Supreme Court sealAs just mentioned, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has decided to accept six new cases, three criminal cases and three civil ones. My prior blog post about those cases discussed the criminal cases; this post discusses the civil ones.

The most newsworthy civil matter seems to be Biskupic v. Cicero, 2007AP2314. Through this appeal Vince Biskupic seeks to have his libel and slander claims against various defendants reinstated. Biskupic, as you may know, is a former Outagamie County D.A. who ran for state attorney general in 2002. Biskupic v. Cicero, 2008 WI App 117, ¶ 1. The defendants include a Shawano newspaper, the Shawano Leader, which published a false report stating that Biskupic had been convicted of bribery and graft. Id. ¶1

The Defendants moved for summary judgment against Biskupic’s claims. The circuit court “concluded Biskupic was a limited purpose public figure, and the actual malice standard applied. The court held the summary judgment submissions showed ‘the defamation occurred as a result of confusion and negligence, not malice.'”  The circuit court also rejected Biskupic’s argument that he should be granted judgment against the newspaper defendants, or a jury instruction, based on a reporter’s destruction of interview notes. Id. ¶10-11. The Court of Appeals affirmed, and the Supreme Court has accepted Biskupic’s petition for review.

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Wisconsin Supreme Court Accepts Six New Cases, Will Consider Constitutionality of Hate-Crime Penalty Enhancer

Supreme Court sealThe Wisconsin Supreme Court recently considered a number of petitions for review and voted to accept six new cases.  (As I said before, I am planning to write here whenever the Wisconsin Supreme Court accepts new cases.  This is the second of that series.)

The cases accepted today include three criminal cases and three civil cases.  This post describes only the three criminal cases.  I’ll blog next about the civil cases.

Probably the most interesting of the three criminal cases is State v. Welda, 2007AP2024-CR.  State v. Welda presents questions of interpretation and constitutionality of Wisconsin’s disorderly conduct crime and hate crime enhancer penalty.  The underlying charges stem from incidents in which three Janesville residents used offensive racial epithets against a number of African-American residents, including two children.  State v. Welda, 2008 WI App U 135, ¶ 2-5.  When police arrived at the scene, 10-15 residents had gathered in the area of the disturbance.  Id. ¶ 2. In addition to describing their African-American neighbors with inflammatory racial epithets, one of the Defendants also waved a Confederate flag during the incident, and two of the Defendants continued to speak the racial epithets after police directed them not to stop.  Id. ¶ 3-5.

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