Sitting on the bench for any length of time exposes a judge to bad press. Sometimes that bad press  maybe quite deserved and other times  unfair, misleading or provoke the judge to want to sue for libel. Not many judges actually sue anyone  and even fewer succeed. Jacob Gershaman had an interesting posting on the Wall Street Journal Legal blog about an interesting opinion dealing with a judge who did sue: “by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in a libel suit involving a Virgin Islands judge and a newspaper there illustrates at least this much: It’s a lot more difficult to prove that a journalist recklessly disregarded the truth in cases that hinge on what is being insinuated, not spelled out.

The court ruled that the newspaper didn’t defame Superior Court Judge Leon Kendall when it published articles about his release of a man who later murdered a 12-year-old girl. The judge claimed that the newspaper had strongly implied that he had known the man was dangerous before granting him bail.”