A Florida judge on Monday dismissed the defamation lawsuit filed by George Zimmerman against NBC and three reporters, saying the former neighborhood watch leader failed to show the network acted with malice.
Judge Debra Nelson said the malice standard was appropriate because Zimmerman became a public figure after he shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford in February 2012, generating a national conversation about race and self-defense laws.
Zimmerman was acquitted last year for Martin's shooting. He said he shot Martin in self-defense when the teenager attacked him. Martin was black. Zimmerman identifies himself as Hispanic.
Zimmerman "voluntarily injected his views into the public controversy surrounding race relations and public safety in Sanford and pursued a course of conduct that ultimately led to the death of Martin and the specific controversy surrounding it," said Nelson, who presided over Zimmerman's criminal trial last summer.
In his lawsuit, Zimmerman said NBC's editing of a story on the shooting made it sound as if Zimmerman voluntarily told an operator that Martin was black. He was actually responding to a dispatcher's question about the Miami teen's race. Zimmerman said the broadcasts made his seem like a racist and exposed him to public ridicule and threats. He was seeking damages for emotional distress and mental anguish.
Zimmerman also said he was defamed when an NBC reporter said he uttered a racial slur during the call with the dispatcher. Zimmerman denied using a slur and law enforcement analyses of the call have been unable to conclude what he said and so defamation can't be proved on that case either, the judge said.
Zimmerman's attorney, James Beasley, was in depositions for another case Monday and didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
NBC News spokeswoman Ali Zelenko said in a statement that the network is "gratified by the court's dismissal of this lawsuit, which we have always believed to be without merit."
Zimmerman still owes his defense attorneys $2.5 million. Any award he could have gotten from the lawsuit was expected to help him pay those bills.
A spokesman for Mark O'Mara, one of Zimmerman's attorneys, didn't have an immediate comment.
