A federal appeals court Tuesday suspended a lower court order that commanded a former reporter to speak up or pay up.
On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton had ruled that Toni Locy, who covered security issues for USA Today, had to disclose her sources for a series of stories on the September 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States that left five people dead.
Starting Tuesday at midnight, Locy was to use her own funds to pay fines that started at $500 a day for a week. The fines doubled to $1,000 for the next week and reached $5,000 a day until April 3, when Walton has scheduled a hearing on the matter.
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On Tuesday, three judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit suspended the fines, pending Locy’s appeal of Walton’s order.
Robert C. Bernius and Leslie Paul Machado of Nixon Peabody LLP, a law firm retained by Gannett Co. Inc., the parent company of USA Today, had filed for an emergency stay of the order on Monday.
Attorneys for several other media organizations had joined in the appeal, calling the order “unwarranted, unprecedented and overbroad.”
Locy had been subpoenaed to testify in a civil suit brought in 2003 by Dr. Steven J. Hatfill against the Justice Department and the F.B.I.
Then Attorney General John Ashcroft had said that Hatfill, a medical doctor and expert on bioterrorism, was a “person of interest” in the attacks. Hatfill, who was never arrested, claims that Ashcroft violated the federal Privacy Act by doing this, as did federal agents who allegedly leaked information about him to the press.
Locy, a veteran of several newspapers who is now an assistant professor of journalism at West Virginia University, told The Wall Street Journal last week that she couldn’t come up with the money.
“I can’t pay it,” she said. “The fines will just accrue. That’s it. I don’t have that kind of money.”
Locy was one of five reporters subpoenaed to testify in Hatfill’s civil suit. In the suit, Hatfill’s lawyers contend that leaks from investigators have prevented him from “finding gainful employment.”
Walton ruled that whatever information Locy and others may have about their sources could be vital to Hatfill’s ability to pursue his lawsuit. Hatfill’s needs “trumped the reporters’ asserted qualified privilege to withhold their sources’ identities,” Walton wrote.
Locy has argued that she doesn’t remember the names of the relevant sources for the stories related to Hatfill.
Walton has delayed ruling on a request by Hatfill’s lawyers that James Stewart, a former reporter for CBS News, also be held in contempt.
The other three reporters subpoenaed, Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman of Newsweek and Allan Lengel of The Washington Post, reportedly cooperated after their sources revealed themselves to Hatfill’s lawyers.
The lawsuit is one of three filed by Hatfill. A libel suit against Daniel Foster, Vanity Fair and Reader’s Digest was settled out of court. Foster’s story about the anthrax attacks had appeared in Vanity Fair and then in Reader’s Digest.
As part of the settlement the magazines agreed to retract any suggestions that Hatfill was behind the attacks.
Hatfill also sued The New York Times Co. and Nicholas Kristof, over some columns Kristof had written about the anthrax attacks. That lawsuit was thrown out of court.
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