Opinion
February 17, 1987
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Nassau County (Levitt, J.).
Ordered that the order is affirmed insofar as appealed from, with costs.
The instant action concerns certain statements made by the defendants to newspaper reporters. The statements alleged to be defamatory related to the plaintiff's arrest and subsequent conviction of the crime of attempted criminal possession of stolen property. Special Term determined that the statements were qualifiedly privileged inasmuch as the defendants had a duty to report on criminal activity in Nassau County and the public had an interest in the dissemination of such information. We agree.
A qualified or conditional privilege attaches to statements in which the party communicating possesses a legal duty to communicate information about another, provided that the communicator has a good-faith belief that the information is true (see, Shapiro v. Health Ins. Plan, 7 N.Y.2d 56, 60-61). At bar, a qualified privilege attaches to the allegedly defamatory statements, inasmuch as the defendants, acting in their capacity as representatives of the Nassau County District Attorney's office, communicated certain information about the plaintiff's arrest and conviction. Therefore, in view of this defense, the plaintiff was required to set forth that the defendants acted with actual malice in communicating the information (see, Shapiro v. Health Ins. Plan, supra; Andrews v. Gardiner, 224 N.Y. 440). Since the plaintiff failed to produce any evidence of actual malice, Special Term correctly granted summary judgment to the defendants (see, Roche v. Hearst Corp., 53 N.Y.2d 767; Kremer Constr. Co. v. Garfinkel, 31 A.D.2d 766).
Additionally, in view of this disposition, Special Term did not err in denying, as academic, the plaintiff's motions to strike certain affirmative defenses. Mangano, J.P., Bracken, Niehoff and Eiber, JJ., concur.