Chad R. Bowman

Chad R. Bowman counsels and represents new and legacy media organizations, as well as nonprofit and for-profit entities engaged in public advocacy and speech. As Practice Leader of Ballard Spahr’s Media and Entertainment Law Group, Chad’s work centers on the legal questions that arise when clients gather information, publish content and exercise their First Amendment rights.

Much of Chad’s counseling involves assessing publication risk before material is released. He reviews draft television news scripts, magazine features, newspaper reports, digital media stories and other content, and advises clients on newsgathering and intellectual property issues. He also provides regular pro bono counseling to several nonprofit advocacy organizations.

In litigation, Chad has represented media clients in state and federal courts across the country. His matters include contested defamation and privacy claims, copyright disputes, subpoenas, access issues, Freedom of Information Act matters, marketing disputes and other First Amendment issues. His practice therefore spans both advice before publication and representation when disputes over speech, reporting or access reach the courts.

Before law school, Chad worked as a reporter for weekly and daily newspapers and for The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. (BNA), covering a range of local and national beats. He later became a partner at the First Amendment law firm Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, which merged with Ballard Spahr in October 2017.

• Defended the Associated Press against a libel claim brought by a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, who objected to an AP report detailing his past business relationship with Paul Manafort, one-time manager of President Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The court granted the AP's motion to dismiss after finding that Deripaska, a billionaire close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, was a public figure who failed to plausibly allege that AP published the report with "actual malice," as the First Amendment requires. The court further found that Deripaska failed to identify anything materially false in the AP report.
• Successfully defended Gawker Media, LLC, in a defamation suit brought in New Jersey state court by former Major League Baseball pitcher Mitch "Wild Thing" Williams, arising from news reports published on Gawker's Deadspin website about the plaintiff's behavior at a youth baseball tournament. The court dismissed many of the challenged statements as either protected opinion or substantially true and, after extensive discovery, granted summary judgment on the remaining statements following a two-day hearing, concluding that the public figure plaintiff could not demonstrate clear and convincing evidence of "actual malice" fault.
• Successfully defended The New Yorker and its reporter David Grann in a defamation lawsuit arising out of a profile of Canadian art authenticator Paul Biro. Affirming the trial court's dismissal of the case, the Second Circuit held that Biro, a public figure in the world of art authentication, had failed to allege facts in his complaint that could plausibly demonstrate the defendants acted with actual malice.

• Successfully defended CBS Interactive in a defamation action brought by Hall of Fame basketball player Scottie Pippen. The former Chicago Bull and Olympic Dream Team star alleged that CBS Interactive and other online publishers suggested that he was bankrupt, and that such reporting was false and defamatory. Dismissal on constitutional grounds was affirmed on appeal by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court then denied review.
• Successfully defended CBS in a defamation action in New York state court arising from a news report on its New York television station about a federal raid on an adult entertainment club. The New York Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of three of the plaintiffs' defamation claims against CBS. The court held that the news report was not "of and concerning" the three plaintiffs, allegedly managers of the club, as none were mentioned or otherwise reasonably understood as referred to in the report.

• Georgetown University Law Center (J.D. 2003, magna cum laude)
  Georgetown Law Journal, Editor of the Annual Review of Criminal Procedure
  Order of the Coif
• Alfred University (B.A. 1994, cum laude)
  Distinguished Scholar Honors

• District of Columbia
• Maryland
• U.S. Supreme Court
• U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and District of Columbia Circuits
• U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
• U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
• U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland

• Chambers USA, Media & Entertainment (District of Columbia), 2020-2026
• The Legal 500, Media and Entertainment: Litigation, 2020-2026
• The Best Lawyers in America, Media Law (Washington, D.C.), 2024-2027

• ABA Intellectual Property Litigation Committee
• D.C. Bar Media & Entertainment Law Committee
• D.C. Open Government Coalition, Board of Directors

• Co-author, Newsgathering and the Law, Lexis Law Publishing, 6th ed., 2023
• Co-author, "Baltimore Jury Returns Defense Verdict in Public Official Media Defamation Trial," MLRC MediaLawLetter, October 2021
• Co-author, "Vetting Social Media Content: Getting Ahead of Fast and Furious," Association of Corporate Counsel, December 2018
• Co-author, "Nevada Court Grants Anti-SLAPP Motion by the Associated Press on Fair Report Grounds," MLRC MediaLawLetter, August 2018
• "Crowd Control," The Financial Manager, November/December, 2016
• "Survey of Maryland Privacy and Related Claims Against the Media," in Annual Media Privacy & Related Law Survey, Media Law Resource Center
• "Courts Extend Twombly and Iqbal Standard to Actual Malice Pleading," Newsletter of the ABA Litigation Section's First Amendment and Media Litigation Committee, Fall 2012/Winter 2013

• Speaker, "Newsroom Legal Topics," Local News Builds Communities Conference & Celebration, Annapolis, MD, May 10, 2019
• "Trends in Media Law & Policy—The Trump Effect," NAM Legislative Conference, December 3, 2018
• "Walterry Insurance Brokers' Libel Workshop: Reducing Legal Risk in Editorial Content," 132nd NNA Annual Convention & Trade Show, Norfolk, VA, September 27, 2018
• Moderator, "Developments to Copyright Law and How Publishers Are Adapting," Digital Content Next Legal and Legislative Day, Washington, D.C., June 12, 2018