A federal court jury awarded Senator Barry Goldwater $1 in compensatory damages and $75,000 in punitive damages in his libel suit against Fact magazine on this day (May 25) in 1968. The magazine had questioned Goldwater's sanity in 1964, the year he ran for president. Included in Fact's coverage was its exclusive survey of psychiatrists, in which the majority willing to offer an opinion declared Goldwater mentally unfit to serve as president. One lasting upshot of this case was the American Psychiatric Association's Goldwater Rule, which says it is unethical for psychiatrists to pass judgment on people they have not personally examined.
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