David A. Schulz

Representative Experience Representative Matters Successfully defended The New York Times in federal trial court, which dismissed a case brought by Sarah Palin over an editorial published following a June 2017 shooting that left a member of Congress injured. The editorial included a sentence that Palin alleged suggested a link between another shooting six years earlier and political rhetoric at the time from Palins political action committee. Palin filed suit claiming she had been defamed, and The Times moved to dismiss the case. Following briefing and an evidentiary hearing, the court dismissed Palins suit, holding that she could not plausibly claim that The Times had published with the required actual malice. Defended the Associated Press against a libel claim brought by a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, who objected to an AP report detailing his past business relationship with Paul Manafort, one-time manager of President Trumps 2016 presidential campaign. The court granted the APs motion to dismiss after finding that Deripaska, a billionaire close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, was a public figure who failed to plausibly allege that AP published the report with actual malice, as the First Amendment requires. The court further found that Deripaska failed to identify anything materially false in the AP report. Successfully defended The New Yorker and its reporter David Grann in a defamation lawsuit arising out of a profile of Canadian art authenticator Paul Biro. Affirming the trial courts dismissal of the case, the Second Circuit held that Biro, a public figure in the world of art authentication, had failed to allege facts in his complaint that could plausibly demonstrate the defendants acted with actual malice. When four reporters were expelled from the Military Commissions at Guantanamo, David convinced the Pentagon that the expulsions violated the reporters First Amendment right to attend criminal trials. He then represented a broad coalition of national news organizations to challenge the media ground rules under which the reporters had been expelled. David continues to fight for public access to all criminal prosecutions at Guantanamo, and, in 2012, he became the first non-party attorney permitted to appear before the commission at Guantanamo when he opposed a government motion to close pretrial proceedings and argued in support of the publics right to access those proceedings. Successfully defended hedge-fund manager Steven Eisman, both at the trial court level and on appeal, in a defamation case arising out of Michael Lewiss best-selling book on the origins of the 2008 financial crisis, The Big Short, for which Mr. Eisman was a source. The plaintiff claimed he was defamed by a chapter in the book that depicted a conversation between himself and Mr. Eisman. The Second Circuit affirmed the district courts prior grant of summary judgment, holding that the statements concerning the plaintiff were either constitutionally protected opinion or substantially true. On behalf of Dow Jones, The New York Times, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, and cable news network NY1, David defeated a suit by the teachers union seeking to block the board of education from disclosing reports on teachers job performance. An appeals court affirmed the trial courts conclusion that New Yorks Freedom of Information Law required the reports to be made available to the public, finding any potential privacy interest of the teachers to be outweighed by a compelling interest in public disclosure. Successfully defended an Oklahoma City television station and its reporter against claims for invasion of privacy brought by a rape victim after the station aired brief video images of the rape in connection with a story on the arrest of a suspect. Show More