A lawsuit brought against WKOW-TV by retired police officer Mark D. Wagner Jr. was revived by a state appeals court panel on Friday, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. Wagner says a WKOW news report confused him with another former Milwaukee police officer, state Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) agent Mark P. Wagner, who fired at a suspect during a traffic stop last year in Madison.
The 4th District Court of Appeals’ ruling overturns one from December 2022 that threw out the lawsuit brought by Mark D. Wagner Jr. after WKOW reporter Tony Galli reported that the DCI agent named Mark Wagner was the same former Milwaukee police officer who had shot and killed an unarmed suspect in Milwaukee in 2002; in fact, they were two different people with nearly identical names and occupations.
The state appeals court panel disputed Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington’s earlier ruling that the report, while false, was not defamatory because a reasonable person would not have seen the report as damaging to Mark D. Wagner’s reputation and would have understood who the broadcast was about. Judge Rachel Graham, in a 42-page ruling for a three-judge panel including Brian Blanchard and Chris Taylor, rejected that contention.
