COHEN v. COWLES MEDIA CO.

Legal Principle at Issue

Whether First Amendment protections for freedom of the press prohibits a source from recovering damages under state promissory estoppel law when a newspaper breaks a confidentiality agreement.

Action

Reversed and remanded. Petitioning party received a favorable disposition.

Facts/Syllabus

During the 1982 Minnesota gubernatorial race, petitioner Dan Cohen, who was associated with one party's campaign, gave court records concerning another party's candidate for lieutenant governor to respondent publishers' newspapers after receiving a promise of confidentiality from their reporters. Nonetheless, the papers identified him in their stories, and he was fired from his job. He filed suit against respondents in state court, alleging, among other things, a breach of contract. 

The trial court rejected respondents' argument that the First Amendment barred the lawsuit, and a jury awarded Cohen compensatory damages. The Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed, but the Supreme Court of Minnesota reversed, holding that a contract cause of action was inappropriate. It then went on to address the question whether Cohen could recover under state law on a promissory estoppel theory, even though that issue was never tried to a jury, nor briefed nor argued by the parties, concluding that enforcement under such a theory would violate respondents' First Amendment rights.