After nearly five years of pretrial wrangling, an Orange County judge on Wednesday dismissed former Supervisor Edison W. Miller’s libel suit against his 1980 campaign foe, current Supervisor Bruce Nestande, and 29 former Vietnam prisoners of war.
Superior Court Judge Judith M. Ryan ruled that Miller, accused of collaborating with the North Vietnamese while he was a POW for more than five years, could not meet the high burden of proof required of public officials in defamation cases.
Ryan said Miller did not present evidence showing that any of the defendants acted with actual malice, that is, with knowledge that their statements were false or with reckless disregard for the truth.
