Baker v. Haldeman-Julius

• Decision Date: 08 April 1939
• Docket Number: 34107.
• Citation: 88 P.2d 1065,149 Kan. 560
• Parties: BAKER v. HALDEMAN-JULIUS.
• Court: Kansas Supreme Court

88 P.2d 1065

149 Kan. 560

BAKER v. HALDEMAN-JULIUS.

No. 34107.

Supreme Court of Kansas

April 8, 1939

Syllabus by the Court.

On general demurrer, allegations of fact contained in petition in libel action are taken as true the same as in any other action.

In libel action based upon article charging that plaintiff's claimed cancer cure was worthless, petition was not demurrable on ground that statement therein that plaintiff thought he had a right to practice medicine, although not a doctor of medicine showed that statements in article calling plaintiff a quack, charlatan, and a yokel-baiter were true where petition also alleged that the alleged defamatory article was false.

"Absolute privilege" in making statements applies to cases in which public service or administration of justice requires complete immunity, as in legislative, executive, and judicial proceedings.

An article charging that plaintiff was attracting many gullible victims and was growing rich with a fake cancer cure was not absolutely privileged.

In libel action based upon publication of article charging that plaintiff's claimed cancer cure was worthless, petition was not demurrable on ground that publication was conditionally privileged, where truth of article in all parts was denied, and it was alleged that publication was for deliberate purpose of injuring plaintiff's reputation and good standing for honesty and integrity.

In libel action based upon publication of article charging that plaintiff's claimed cancer cure was worthless, petition was not demurrable because article contained opinions of eminent authorities and showed a good purpose to protect cancer sufferers, where petition charged that entire article was false and contained a specific allegation of malice and wrongful purpose.

An amended petition in an action to recover damages for alleged libel examined, and held to state a cause of action.

Appeal from District Court, Crawford County; L. M. Resler, Judge.

Action for libel by Norman Baker against E. Haldeman-Julius. Judgment for plaintiff, and the defendant appeals.

Judgment affirmed.

Geo. F Beezley, of Girard, for appellant.

Thomas D. Winter, of Girard, and H. L. Fisher, of Laredo, Tex., for appellee.

THIELE Justice.

This was an action for libel. Defendant demurred to the amended petition and appeals from an adverse ruling.

The amended petition alleged that plaintiff was a resident of the state of Iowa and was not licensed to practice medicine. Several years prior to publication of the article complained of, plaintiff had obtained, discovered and developed certain remedies for the treatment of cancer and other ailments and about the year 1929 had established a hospital at Muscatine Iowa, which was operated by duly licensed physicians and surgeons who utilized the Baker remedies with great success that approximately 12,000 persons had been treated at the hospital and fully seventy-five percent of them had been cured or greatly benefited, and by reason thereof the Baker remedies had become widely and favorably known; that plaintiff, for the purpose of increasing the sale and use of his remedies, had advertised extensively by circulars, booklets and radio addresses, and had become widely known throughout the United States. It was further alleged that defendant was engaged as a publisher at Girard and distributed books, papers, circulars, etc., throughout the United States and was widely known as a publisher, and that for the purpose of defaming plaintiff and of injuring and tearing down his reputation, and of damaging and injuring plaintiff's standing and influence and the faith and confidence the public had in him and for the purpose of exposing plaintiff to public hatred, contempt and ridicule and to impeach his integrity, published in The American Freeman an article under the heading "Questions and Answers" certain libelous, false and defamatory matter of and concerning the plaintiff. The article will be referred to hereafter. That the article falsely and maliciously charged, and was meant to charge and be understood by ordinary readers as charging that plaintiff was a dishonest, conscienceless, persistent liar, cheat and fraud, who made false statements and representations for the purpose of obtaining money from persons incurably ill, and particularly from the ignorant referred to as yokels, and as intending to charge that plaintiff's remedies are worthless and do not benefit the persons to whom they may be administered, etc. It was further alleged that the aforesaid publication was false, defamatory and libelous and was made deliberately, maliciously and recklessly without any effort to ascertain the truth from plaintiff or to make any investigation of the hospital and ignoring its success and for the deliberate purpose of injuring plaintiff's reputation, his standing for honesty and integrity, of causing him personal and financial loss and of bringing upon him the distrust, dislike, ridicule, contempt and hatred of people who might be readers of defendant's publication, and that by reason of the publication plaintiff had suffered severe loss in his good name, in his reputation and standing for honesty and integrity, and in his business standing, and had also suffered severe financial loss. He prayed for actual and exemplary damages.

The article complained of is too long to be quoted in full. We quote and summarize as follows:

"Does the Baker Cancer Treatment actually cure a substantial percentage of its cases, as it claims it does--or are such claims a pack of lies?

"Norman Baker, of Muscatine, Iowa, is one of the most dangerous quacks in the world--a mercenary charlatan who is a menace to his gullible victims. The man knows absolutely nothing about cancer, but he is a brilliant publicity-monger, which enables him to attract thousands of ailing suckers to his 'hospital,' where he advertises, lying of course, that cancer is curable. He rests his publicity on so-called testimonials, which means merely this: uninformed, untrained laymen diagnose their ailments and sign statements that Baker has 'cured' them. Such 'evidence' means exactly nothing. Instead, let Baker receive a group of cancer patients who have been declared to be in even moderately advanced stages--accredited as cancer sufferers by competent experts of real standing in the scientific world--and let him cure just one such case and I'll take back my charges of quackery and become his most enthusiastic supporter. The fact is, of course, that Baker can't cure cancer, because the terrible malady is still uncurable, science being helpless. ***"

This portion is followed by statements that science does not know what cancer is, that in early stages some cancer patients may be saved, but others are doomed, and "Don't, by any means, listen to a Baker who is out to get your money and grow rich through your suffering. He has no standing in science, he is known to be nothing more than a yokel-baiter, and trusting him will mean nothing but wasted time, money and hope."

The author of the article states he made inquiry of the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association and received a reply which is quoted. It is to the effect that Baker is not a doctor of medicine; that he was exposed in "the Journal" of April 12, 1930 and sued for half a million dollars in damages but when the case was tried the jury returned a verdict in the association's favor; thereafter Baker went to Mexico and established a radio station, but continued to run his institution at Muscatine. In March 1935, it was reported that Baker's application for restoration of his federal license to run a broadcasting station in Muscatine had been denied. In October, 1935, the newspapers reported that Baker had been found in contempt of court and punished for practicing medicine without a license in Iowa. The author of the article then states that Arthur J. Cramp "who is one of our greatest authorities on medical charlatans and quackeries" had made a study of the enterprises of Norman Baker, and that use of his writings had been made for the facts presented, and it was learned that Baker had applied his "shrewd salesmanship" to cigars, radios, storage batteries, alarm clocks and other articles and suddenly blossomed out as a cancer expert and urged his treatments positively cured cancer; that he obtained a "formula" for "internal cancer" from one source and a "formula" for "external cancer" from another, and had confessed, when questioned on the witness stand, he made as much as $75,000 in a single month, and even after his "cures" had been exposed, Baker continued to take in large sums. Omitting much matter dealing with Baker's activities, it is further recited that Baker commenced his cancer promotion with an invitation broadcast over radio, that he wanted five persons suffering from cancer to take his treatment at his hospital (in Kansas City, Missouri) the expense to them being only their own transportation. Attention is then given to some of Baker's advertising in which it is stated that Baker and his fellow investigators selected the cases themselves for observation after they had determined they were authentic cases of cancer, that they...