A college basketball player has been awarded $9.25 million in damages against The New York Times, after winning a defamation case against the newspaper on 20th August. Kai Spears had filed the libel suit after the NYT wrongly alleged that he was a passenger in a car linked to a fatal shooting.
In the article — headlined “On Eve of Tournament, Fourth Alabama Player Is Placed at Shooting” and published on 16th March 2023 (p. 6A) — Billy Witz wrote that the occupants of a car at the crime scene included “Kai Spears, a freshman walk-on whose presence at the scene had not previously been reported.” This is the first libel case the NYT has lost in more than fifty years.
In the article — headlined “On Eve of Tournament, Fourth Alabama Player Is Placed at Shooting” and published on 16th March 2023 (p. 6A) — Billy Witz wrote that the occupants of a car at the crime scene included “Kai Spears, a freshman walk-on whose presence at the scene had not previously been reported.” This is the first libel case the NYT has lost in more than fifty years.