By Dan Glaun
Mass Live
The Supreme Court has rejected "Boston" founder Tom Scholz' effort to restart his defamation lawsuit against the Boston Herald, eight years after the newspaper published comments from bandmate Brad Delp's wife that allegedly blamed Scholz for Delp's suicide.
Scholz, whose musical collaboration with Delp in the 1970s led to hits like "More Than a Feeling" and "Don't Look Back," had his lawsuit dismissed by the state's Supreme Judicial Court last year, after justices ruled that Micki Delp's comments to the Herald were opinions, not defamation.
Now, the country's highest court has weighed in, rejecting Scholz's bid to reinstate the lawsuit, the Associated Press reports.
The Boston Herald's attorney cheered the decision in a statement published by the Herald.
This is a credit not only to the Herald's reporting," said the Herald's attorney Jeff Robbins, "but to its guts and determination in refusing to back down, and in insisting that well-established First Amendment principles be defended."
Delp, a Peabody, Mass. native, killed himself in 2007. In a story on Delp's death, the Herald reported that his wife Micki Delp attributed his suicide to professional tensions within the band.
"According to Micki Delp, Brad was upset of the lingering bad feelings from the ugly breakup of the band Boston over 20 years ago," the Herald reported, according to an excerpt of the story included in Scholz's legal filing.
Scholz accused the Herald of misreporting Micki Delp's comments and portraying him as an "insensitive, heartless and oppressive person."
A state court and then later the Supreme Judicial Court rejected Scholz's claims, clearing the Herald of liability.
"The statements at issue could not have been understood by a reasonable reader to have been anything but opinions regarding the reason Brad committed suicide," the court wrote in its opinion, according to WCVB.
Scholz had petitioned the Supreme Court earlier this year to address the matter, but on Monday the court declined to hear the case.