Tom Fetzer's libel lawsuit has no merit, said Paul Knight, the general manager of a Wilmington radio station being sued by the former Raleigh mayor.

"We didn't slander or libel him," Knight said this afternoon, Sarah Ovaska reports.

Fetzer, who is campaigning to head the N.C. Republican Party, filed a libel lawsuit Monday in Wake County against Curtis Wright and Sea-Comm Inc., the company that runs 93.7 and 106, two Wilmington-area talk radio stations that Wright has a morning show on.

In the lawsuit, Fetzer claims that Wright sent an email to multiple county GOP chairs questioning the candidates for the selection next weekend of a new state party chair. The email included a copy of an anonymous letter insinuating that Fetzer is gay.

Though Fetzer doesn't mention specifically what the potentially libelous statements are in his lawsuit, he has denied he is gay.

Knight said he will have his lawyers file a motion to dismiss the suit either the end of this week or next.

Tom Fetzer filed a libel lawsuit late Monday afternoon against a Wilmington radio host who forwarded an email insinuating that Fetzer was gay.

The suit seeks damages of $10,000 or more from Curtis Wright, the host of "The Morning Beat with Curtis Wright," as well as Sea-Comm, Inc., the corporate owner of WLTT, Curtis' employer, Sarah Ovaska reports.

Wright had forwarded an email that included allegations that Fetzer is gay, though Wright is not thought to be the author of the anonymous email, according to the lawsuit.

In the suit, Fetzer accuses Wright of concocting a smear campaign to thwart his campaign to lead the state Republican Party. Curtis, Fetzer claims in the suit, has endorsed Marcus Kindley from Guilford County for the position.

The lawsuit never mentions the word gay nor does it specify the potentially libelous statements. 

Fetzer and his attorneys wrote that Curtis spread rumors that "tend to charge Mr. Fetzer with a crime of offense involving moral turpitude, to charge Mr. Fetzer with dishonesty, to disgrace and degrade Mr. Fetzer, to hold Mr. Fetzer up to public ridicule and contempt, and to cause Mr. Fetzer to be avoided and shunned."

Former Raleigh mayor Tom Fetzer says he will sue a Wilmington radio host for libel for forwarding an e-mail that alleges he is gay.

A longtime Republican political consultant, Fetzer is running for head of the state party.

In an e-mail to supporters today, he said that he intends to "vigorously pursue legal action" against radio host Curtis Wright, his employer, WLTT, and corporate owner Sea-Comm Media.

"The fact that I'm 54 and single does not mean that I have to put up with vicious rumors that I'm gay," he wrote in the e-mail. "The fact that I am heterosexual is a matter of public record."

Fetzer told Dome he will file the lawsuit on Tuesday.

North Carolina's case law may present a challenge to a potential lawsuit.

In 1994, the N.C. Court of Appeals ruled that falsely claiming that someone was gay or bisexual was not libelous by itself.

After the jump, Fetzer's letter.

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Sen. Steve Goss says libel on blogs needs more study.

The Boone Democrat said that he has pulled a bill that would have put civil and criminal penalties on libel published on blogs and other online publications.

Instead, he's asked a Senate committee to substitute a bill that would study the issue to see if future legislation is needed.

The bill drew heated controversy online, especially for its criminal provisions, which Goss said after he filed the bill were unintentional. He added today that bloggers and others pointed out other problems with the wording of the bill.

"I'll be the first to admit when I'm wrong," he said.

He said he's still concerned about the speed of online news and gossip and hopes that a future bill will help resolve some of the problem, though he noted that he views the First Amendment as "sacred."

Fittingly, news of the change surfaced first on Watauga Watch, a blog run by Jerry Williamson in Goss' area.

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The conservative Civitas Institute calls a blog libel bill the "bad bill of the week."

Executive Director Francis De Luca calls an attempt to expand civil and criminal libel laws to cover Internet communication "The Gossip Girl Bill" after the popular TV show in which students anonymously post rumors. 

The negative public reaction to Sen. Goss’ bill was so universal that left-wing and right-wing groups denounced it equally. Basically, SB 46 would treat blogs and electronic communications under different libel and slander criteria from print or news media. It would criminalize and allow lawsuits to be brought against any Web site, blog, forum or newsgroup that posted allegedly false information.

The "bad bill of the week" is a new weekly column by the think tank.

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A civil liberties lawyer says a bill about blog libel is too broadly written.

Matt Zimmerman, an attorney with the pro-civil liberties Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that a proposed Senate bill conflicts with federal law and the U.S. constitution in three major ways:

LIBELOUS COMMENTS. The bill says that administrators of Web sites shall only be held liable for libel posted by third parties, such as a blog comment, if they are negligent. But Zimmerman says the federal Communications Decency Act of 1996 expressly forbids administrators from ever being held liable for third-party comments.

JURISDICTION. The bill covers libelous material "received or viewed" in North Carolina. But Zimmerman said that would effectively put the entire planet under the jurisdiction of the state law, since anything published on the World Wide Web can be seen here. He said that is unconstitutional because it oversteps the state's legal jurisdiction.

CRIMINAL LIBEL. The bill includes criminal penalties for libel, although a sponsor said that was a mistake. Still, Zimmerman said that while criminal libel laws are rarely enforced due to First Amendment concerns, even those that remain on the books require the person to be maliciously or willfully spreading a libelous statement they know is untrue.

Despite his concerns, Zimmerman said that he does not view the underlying rationale for the bill as wrong.

"I don't think there's anything objectionable necessarily about updating a statute to make it clear that libel law extends to online communication," he said.

North Carolina's criminal libel law may never have been used.

A search of the legal database Westlaw turned up only one appellate-level case that cites the 1901 law making it a Class 2 misdemeanor to libel someone.

The 1961 case, Gillikin v. Bell, only mentions the criminal statute in passing, noting that it's irrelevant to the civil complaint under discussion. Westlaw only covers cases in the N.C. Court of Appeals and the state Supreme Court, so it's possible the statute has been used in trial court.

Ashley Perkinson, a First Amendment lawyer with Everett Gaskins Hancock and Stevens in Raleigh, said the criminal libel statute would likely be struck down if it were ever challenged at the appellate level. Her colleagues were not even aware of it.

"This is something that has not come up in our practice," she said.

Since colonial times, libel law in the United States has been a civil matter, not criminal. American common law and First Amendment decisions have held that charging someone with a crime for something they wrote or said is a violation of the First Amendment rights to freedom of expression.

Perkinson said that a recent bill to extend the criminal libel statute to blogs and other electronic communication is "blatantly unconstitutional."

Full Disclosure: Everett Gaskins is the law firm for The News & Observer.

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