Soldier of Fortune (magazine)

During the late 1980s, Soldier of Fortune was sued in civil court several times for having published classified advertisements of services by private mercenaries. In 1987, Norman Norwood, of Arkansas, sued SOF magazine, because of injuries he suffered during a murder attempt by two men hired via a "Gun for Hire" advertisement in the magazine. The US District Court denied the magazine's motion for summary judgment based upon the Constitutional right of free speech under the First Amendment. The Court said, "reasonable jurors could find that the advertisement posed a substantial risk of harm" and that "gun for hire" ads were not the type of speech intended for protection under the First Amendment.[13] In the end, Norwood and Soldier of Fortune magazine settled his lawsuit out of court.[14]

In February 1985, John Wayne Hearn, a Vietnam veteran, shot and killed Sandra Black for a $10,000 payment from her husband, Robert Black. Black communicated with Hearn through a classified advertisement published in Soldier of Fortune, wherein Hearn solicited "high-risk assignments. U.S. or overseas". In 1989, Sandra Black's son Gary and her mother Marjorie Eimann filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against SOF magazine and its parent publishing company Omega Group Ltd., seeking $21 million in redress of their grievance.[15]

The jury found Soldier of Fortune grossly negligent in publishing Hearn's classified ad for implicit illegal activity (murder) and awarded the plaintiffs $9.5 million in damages. However, in 1990 the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the verdict, saying that the standard of conduct imposed upon the magazine was too high, because the advertisement was ambiguously worded.[16][17]

In 1989, four men were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in the 1985 contract killing of Richard Braun, of Atlanta, Georgia. The killers were hired through a classified services advertisement published in SOF magazine that read: "GUN FOR HIRE". Braun's sons filed a civil lawsuit against the magazine and a jury found in their favor, awarding them $12.37 million in damages, which the judge later reduced to $4.37 million. Nonetheless, in 1992 the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the judgement of the jury, saying "the publisher could recognize the offer of criminal activity as readily as its readers, obviously, did".[14] The Brauns and SOF magazine settled the wrongful-death lawsuit for $200,000.[18] One consequence of the lost lawsuits was that the magazine suspended publication of classified advertisements for mercenary or related work, either in the U.S. or overseas.[18]