Boston Herald

Three months after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's decision throwing out a lawsuit filed against the Boston Herald by rocker Tom Scholz and affirming a lower court's award of over $130,000 in costs in favor of the newspaper, Scholz has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.

In November 2015, the state's top court ruled, in a unanimous decision, that the paper's coverage of the suicide of former Boston lead singer Brad Delp was opinion protected under the First Amendment.

Scholz -- the leader of the band Boston -- sued the Herald in 2010 claiming that articles published by the Herald's Inside Track columnists in March 2007 implied that he was responsible for Delp's decision to take his life. The court ruled otherwise.

The U.S. Supreme Court denies the vast majority of petitions and leaves the decisions of the lower courts to stand. Each year, the court receives some 10,000 petitions, but only takes roughly 80 to 150 cases each term, creating a grant rate that typically hovers at around 1 percent.