the new firm, Robert R. McCormick sent a steady stream of cases to Kirkland. When McCormick established the New York Daily News in 1919, Kirkland handled the legal work involved. Also in 1919, Kirkland defended McCormick and the Tribune in a libel suit brought by Henry Ford. The Tribune had run an editorial in which it called Ford an anarchist for saying that any of his workers who volunteered to serve in the National Guard of the United States (which was then mobilized on the U.S. - Mexico border to prevent the Mexican Revolution from spilling into the United States) would be fired. At the three-month trial, Kirkland argued that the Tribune'''s editorializing was fair comment. Ford ultimately prevailed in the case, but the jury awarded Ford only six cents in damages and six cents for costs. McCormick and the Tribune refused to pay the twelve cents, and Ford ultimately collected nothing. Kirkland was involved in another major freedom of the press case in 1920 when the City of Chicago sued the Tribune after the Tribune ran an editorial arguing that Mayor William Hale Thompson's policies had bankrupted the city. Kirkland argued that constitutional guarantees on freedom of the press should prevent governments from suing private citizens for libel; the Supreme Court of Illinois was persuaded and ultimately ruled that the common law doctrine of "libel on the state" had no place in a free republic. Mayor Thompson later brought a second lawsuit against the Tribune, alleging that the newspaper had accused him of having pro-German leanings during World War I. During the trial, the illness of a juror led to a break in the proceedings, and the case was later dismissed for want of prosecution. Kirkland won a major battle for freedom of the press in the Supreme Court of the United States with Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931). In that case, a Minnesota trial judge had declared a small Minnesota newspaper to be a public nuisance and permanently enjoined the newspaper from publishing because it had adversely criticized certain local politicians in violation of an injunction. When McCormick, who was then Chairman of the American Newspaper Publishers Association's Committee on Free Speech, found out about the case, he persuaded the American Newspaper Publishers Association to intervene in the case, with Kirkland serving as their lawyer. Kirkland lost the case in the Minnesota Supreme Court but later