Jerry Falwell vs. Hustler Magazine The respondent, Jerry Falwell, a nationally known minister and commentator of politics, filed a diversity action in Federal District Court against the petitioners, Hustler Magazine, Inc., a nationally circulated magazine and its publisher, to recover damages for, inter alia, libel and in intentional infliction of emotional distress arising from the publication of a parody that portrayed Falwell as having had a drunken incestuous rendezvous with his mother in an outhouse. The jury found against Falwell on the libel claim specifically because the parody couldn't “reasonably be understood as describing actual facts...or eve