By Maria Averion
Autumn Quarter of 1989, when I was editor-in-chief of The Lantern, is seared in my memory. I had a front-row seat to Lantern history.
For years afterward, every time I came back home to Columbus for a visit, my parents or siblings would make the same comments as we passed the northeast corner of Henderson Road and Riverside Drive on the way to my parents’ nearby condo. There it was: Albert DeSantis’ mansion with a moat. (Albert DeSantis mansion).
My older brother, also an OSU alum, commented that he always brags to his friends that “My sister was sued by Al DeSantis” or “Al DeSantis sued my sister for $5 Million.”
His name didn’t mean anything outside the state or OSU circles, but Al DeSantis, a local real estate man, was well known around campus. And he profoundly impacted both my personal life and my journalism career for years to come.
One night I entered the newsroom and began making the rounds in preparation for that night’s printing. When I walked into the paste-up room, one of the layout guys, Charlie, motioned for me to come over to the pages he was working on. He pointed out a cartoon to me, one of the regular strips we ran. This one was by Terence Concannon. In keeping with his normal style, it was a stick figure (of Al DeSantis) pointing to two homeless students living in a cardboard box and yelling, “You people are pigs! Clean it up by tomorrow or I’ll use it as a toy box.”
I immediately pulled the strip off the page and took it to consult with several people, including Lantern adviser Bill Green and media law professor Hugh Donahue. Initially, Donahue laughed and said the cartoon was funny. Then he advised that if we wanted to publish it, we shouldn’t run it on the cartoon page where Concannon’s strip usually ran, but instead on the Opinion Page where it was protected by the First Amendment’s “fair comment” privilege to express opinions about public figures. I decided to hold it for the day to mull it over and talk further to the adviser as well as the cartoonist.
The next day, after input from everyone and their mother, I decided to run the cartoon on the Opinion Page as Professor Donahue had suggested. We ran it and braced for the reaction. It was swift.
Sometime in the next few days, three individuals: myself as the editor-in-chief, the cartoonist, and adviser Green were sued by Al DeSantis for libel (oddly, The Lantern itself was not sued). The papers served on us sought damages of $5 million (October Lantern Article).
It was mind-blowing at the time, but luckily, we had prepared. We learned that because Ohio State was a state school, the Ohio attorney general was our lawyer. The director of the School of Journalism, Walter Bunge, supported us at the time, as did many of the professors.
We met with Bunge and the attorney general and discussed what could happen. It turned out that DeSantis’s lawyer filed the case in the wrong court — the criminal rather than civil court. For whatever reason, DeSantis decided not to refile, essentially dropping the case. We assumed he’d gotten legal advice from other lawyers that his case was without merit.
I never had to defend myself from another libel lawsuit in my career. But the case was instructive, because as a copyeditor I always knew the law and kept it in mind when editing others’ stories.
As a reminder and memento, I kept the papers from when I was sued by Al DeSantis for $5 million. And I still have them to this day.
Editor’s Note: Maria Averion graduated with a B.A. in Journalism in 1990. For more than 20 years she was a graphic designer, page designer, photo editor and web designer in the newspaper business for papers including The Washington Post and The Columbus Dispatch. Today she does freelance web design in Columbus.
