DATE: Monday, September 8, 1997             TAG: 9709080038

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   40 lines

COURT WILL HEAR LIBEL APPEAL INVOLVING VA. TECH

The Virginia Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of a Virginia Tech administrator who is suing the school newspaper because of the way it referred to her in an April 1996 article.

Sharon Yeagle filed the lawsuit against the Collegiate Times shortly after it published the article, which called her the ``Director of Butt Licking.'' She is the assistant to the vice president for student affairs at the Blacksburg school. Her suit said that the newspaper had defamed her and asked for $850,000 in damages.

Montgomery County Circuit Judge Ray W. Grubbs dismissed the case in March, saying that Ms. Yeagle's lawsuit had no merit because no reasonable person would believe that the title the newspaper gave her was accurate. Yeagle appealed to the state Supreme Court.

The court agreed Thursday to consider reversing Grubbs's decision. A reversal would allow a jury trial to take place.

``Our position is that this was not a mere inadvertent mistake but instead was an intentional act designed to cause her harm,'' said S.D. Roberts Moore, Yeagle's attorney.

The article was about the university sending a record number of students to the Virginia Governor's Fellows Program. A quote from Yeagle in the text gave her correct title, but a display quote in large type used the other phrase.

Lynn Nystrom, the paper's faculty adviser for 20 years, said the newspaper staff has a generic computer template for display quotes with a phony title so absurd that no one could forget to amend it. But in the late-night rush to publish, everyone forgot, Nystrom said.

The same mistake happened once before with a different faculty member, Nystrom said, but nothing came of it. ``My understanding is he basically laughed it off,'' she said.

Students went to see Yeagle the day of the error to apologize, Nystrom said. In addition, the next issue of the paper - three months later - printed an apology.

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