From the Legal Hotline (1-877-NEWS-LAW)
Q. We recently received a letter to the editor. Since the letter contained several unverified attacks on public officials, we didn’t think it was appropriate to publish in this form. However, can we run it as a paid political advertisement with the author’s name and a disclaimer saying he paid for the ad and avoid liability?
A. I don’t believe the paper can avoid liability for potential defamation by printing the letter as a paid political ad. We don’t know whether the statements in the letter are true, which is worrisome, and there are no public records you can point to as the basis for the statements. The letter suggests, in effect, that the local sheriff bribed a citizen, which is a potentially defamatory statement against both people. I think you could suggest to the writer that he could make copies of his letter and send it by bulk mail, or hand it out on the streets, etc. As for the paper, I would be disinclined to print it, unless at the very least, the allegations about “bribery” are removed.
Q. Another letter to the editor we received contains no problematic statements so it should be safe to run in that form. However, our paper has a policy not to run these during the political season for or against a political candidate. However, can we run the letter as a paid political advertisement (e.g., “vote for” the candidate)?
A. I think this is an option for you. You could explain your policy not to run letters pre-election to the writer and offer him the opportunity to run it as a paid ad with the necessary disclaimer.
Q. We are switching our paper’s website platform in the near future and eventually sunsetting the current website. Do we need to provide a searchable function on the website for the public notices/legal ads? If so, is providing a link to the FPA public notices website (where users can search legals) sufficient?
A. The ads on your website must be searchable. Many, if not most, of our member papers have a link that allows a click thru taking the reader from your legal page off-site to the FPA aggregate site at https://floridapublicnotices.com. Once there, users can search all uploaded legal ads.
Q. We received a request to publish a legal announcement from what appears to be an adherent to the “sovereign citizen” movement. Can you advise me on any issues we might encounter if we publish/refuse to publish the announcement?
A. The ad contains several statements that frankly make no sense to me. That said, I don’t think anything in the ad is libelous (false) or discloses sensitive personal info. of others, so it seems you could run it or not run it based on your editorial discretion.
Q. I’ve been writing a series of stories about a public/private partnership between the city and a local developer. A requirement of this partnership is that the developer would plant coconut palm trees in the city’s commercial district. It was represented at a city meeting that there would be, prior to planting the trees, a signed agreement in place in which the developer would maintain the trees and indemnify the city against any damage caused by the palms. The agreement, after multiple records requests to the city, was produced after several weeks. It had been signed by the city official more than a month after the palms had been planted. The developer had reportedly signed it earlier.
I want to be sure I’m representing this correctly in a follow-up story so my question is this: In general terms, is a contract signed by only one of the two parties an enforceable contract?
A. I don’t know all the facts but, in general, a written contract signed by only one party may still be enforceable, with the right level of certainty or intent. That means the party that didn’t sign must have done something to show an understanding and acceptance of the terms of the agreement. A couple of examples — a website’s terms of service, which the customer signs, but the website or site owner doesn’t. Or, signs that are often posted in parking garages, where the garage basically tells you what your rights are, and that you agree to them just by the act of parking in the garage.
Courts will look to the behavior of the parties, and possibly extrinsic evidence like emails or other communications, to see if the parties read, understood, and were acting in accordance with the contract such that their actions show they were accepting the terms of the contract.
There is one exception to where not all parties have to sign an agreement and that is if the terms of the agreement specifically say that it is only valid when all parties sign, or that it isn’t valid until all parties do so. In that case, the signatures of all parties must appear on the agreement.
In this case, it looks like the agreement was not signed by the city until after the trees had been planted. The developer signed at some point earlier. Unless the contract requires it, I don’t think that both parties necessarily must have signed before the trees were planted to render the contract enforceable. There was apparently an oral representation that there would be a signed agreement in place before planting but if that wasn’t part of the actual agreement it’s hard to say whether it can be used to invalidate the ultimately signed contract, especially if there is a “no oral modification” clause in the contract.
A more definite answer is hard to provide without looking at the specifics.