Andoscia v. Coady, 10631

• Decision Date: 02 June 1965
• Docket Number: No. 10631,10631
• Parties: Joseph P. ANDOSCIA v. James E. COADY et al. Ex.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

Page 581

210 A.2d 581

99 R.I. 731

Joseph P. ANDOSCIA v. James E. COADY et al.

Ex. No. 10631.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

June 2, 1965.

Pontarelli & Berberian, Aram K. Berberian, Providence, for plaintiff.

Charles H. Anderson, Providence, for defendants.

ROBERTS, Justice.

This is an action of trespass on the case brought to recover damages alleged to have resulted from the defendants' publication of a defamatory statement concerning the plaintiff. The defendants' demurrer to the declaration was overruled by a justice of the superior court, and thereafter the defendants filed two special pleas and a plea to the general issue. The case was tried to a jury in the superior court and resulted in a verdict for the defendants, the trial justice thereafter granting the defendants' motion for a directed vedict. After the plaintiff's motion for a new trial was denied, he prosecuted a bill of exceptions to this court, including exceptions to certain evidentiary rulings, portions of the charge as given, the denial of his requests to charge, and the granting of the defendants' motion for a directed verdict.

The circumstances in which a publication of the defamatory statement is alleged to have been made are not in dispute. The plaintiff was a member of the Quonset Point Credit Union, a credit union organized among the employees of the Quonset Point Naval Air Station. On May 16, 1962 plaintiff was present at a meeting of a group of representatives of the full membership of that union at which defendant Coady was presiding. In the course of the proceedings plaintiff took the floor, read a prepared statement, and then submitted a motion concerned with the restoration of a prior method of cashing paychecks of employees of the Naval Air Station. As plaintiff was making this motion defendant Coady requested defendant Lynch, manager of the Credit union, to read from a document in his possession, and it is the reading of this document that constituted the alleged publication of defamatory matter upon which the instant action was brought.

The declaration, in setting up the publication of the defamatory statement, alleges that 'Within the possession and control of the defendants was a paper upon which was written the allegations that the plaintiff had a loan account with the Quonset Point Credit Union which was in arrears, that the account was turned over to an attorney for collection, that the money which was represented by shares held by the plaintiff was debited from his share account and credited to his loan account and that the plaintiff's membership in the credit union was cancelled.' There is in the declaration no further averment as to the contents of the statement alleged to be defamatory. However, plaintiff does further aver, by way of innuendo, that defendants 'intending to destroy the reputation of the plaintiff and to cause him to be regarded as a person who did not liquidate his lawful obligations did wrongfully, falsely and maliciously publish, and cause to be published of and concerning the plaintiff the aforesaid writing * * *.'

We turn first to a consideration of plaintiff's exceptions to the evidentiary rulings. He argues in general that the jury was entitled to be informed as to the facts and circumstances that preceded and surrounded the publication of the alleged defamatory statement. We are unable to accept to broad an assertion, being of the opinion that the conventional criteria controlling the admissibility of writings have application in this instance. The plaintiff in his brief presses but one such exception, that to the ruling of the court excluding from evidence a written instrument marked as plaintiff's exhibit 2 for identification.

This writing, signed by plaintiff, appears to be a recital of the history of a dispute relating to services performed by the credit union for its members. The plaintiff argues that it was admissible as being material on the issue of defendants' malice. Whatever might be the merits of that contention, we are persuaded that in the form in which it was offered the writing could only serve to mislead and confuse the jury on the issue of the publication of a defamatory statement and was properly excluded. We, therefore, overrule all of the evidentiary exceptions.

The defendants' motion for a directed verdict was made at the close of the evidence, and under rule of court decision was reserved thereon until the cause had been submitted to the jury. After the jury had returned a verdict for defendants, the court granted the motion for direction on the ground, inter alia, 'that the evidence does not prove a slanderous statement.'

The court obviously concluded that plaintiff had not proved the statement of which complaint was made to be defamatory per se or by reason of the innuendo. In Reid v. Providence Journal Co., 20 R.I. 120, at page 123, 37 A. 637, at page 638, this court said: 'But plaintiffs' counsel contends that, even though the language complained of is not actionable per se, and is not made so by the innuendoes, yet it becomes actionable by reason of the allegation of special damage. We do not agree to so broad a statement of the law as pertaining to libel and slander; for, while it is undoubtedly true that all words, in their nature defamatory, are actionable if a special damage follows, yet this is not true with regard to words which are not in their nature defamatory.'

The case was tried on a plea of the general issue and two pleas of justification. While in an appropriate case a plea of justification may admit the truth of the innuendo and thus admit the defamatory character of a publication, it does not follow that where a publication in fact is not defamatory, the innuendo may be employed to import new matter into the publication for the purpose of rendering it defamatory. In Hackett v. Providence Telegram Publishing Co., 18 R.I. 589, 29 A. 143, this court said: 'The office of an innuendo is to define the...