Municipal and Industrial System, Bonneville Unit, Central Utah Project, Utah: correspondence and documents, 1979

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s Mr. Robert B. Hilbert December 6, 1985 Page 4 reproduced for your edification two newspaper articles, one from the Deseret News, under date of July 22 and 23, 1985 wherein the author of the article, Lee Davidson, quotes you as saying that "the bureau increased the cost of CUP by experimenting with new, exotic ways to build dams and other grand schemes." The second is an article published in the Daily Herald September 27, 1985 where the other quotes concerning lack of control by Central Utah Water Conservancy District over actions of the CUP and the Central Utah Project are quoted. Each of those quotes, made by two different newspaper writers and attributed to you, are direct quotations. If you did not make the statements attributed to you, I think your redress is against the authors of the articles not against the Provo Municipal Council who simply utilized the quotations attributed to you by those writers. If you did not say those things, you have our apology; but, I assure you we were acting in good faith when we simply repeated them. Title 43-3 of the Utah Code referred to in your letter does not exist and I assume that when you quote 45-3 of the Utah Code that you are talking about the "abuse of personal identity" statute of the state. This is a statute written to prohibit the use of a person's name, title, picture, or portrait as an endorsement of a product or idea being pushed in an advertisement. It is in the nature of a defamation of character statute; and, as such, truth is an absolute defense against any allegation of infringement of your rights. Since your name was used correctly and your title and references to your conflicting employments were correctly reported, I do not see that you have any standing under that statute to sue just because someone puts your name and title and direct statements made by you in the newspaper. As a person in public life, you have to expect some adverse comment and it appears to me that the comments made by the members of the Municipal Council were within the limits allowed by the law. Any impropriety would appear to be on your part rather than on the part of the Council. The mere fact that they put it in the public press is not a violation of that or any other statute. On behalf of the City, may I state in closing that we have^ no purpose or intent to harm you personally and I have cautioned members of the board to neither publish nor discuss this matter with_anyone outside of their own ranks. We pledge to you that we will refrain from any further discussion of this