Byram v. Aiken

• Decision Date: 08 June 1896
• Docket Number: Nos. 10,037 - (246).,s. 10,037 - (246).
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court
• Parties: JAMES L. BYRAM v. JAMES AIKEN and Another.<SMALL><SUP>1</SUP></SMALL>

Page 87

65 Minn. 87

JAMES L. BYRAM v. JAMES AIKEN and Another.¹

Nos. 10,037 - (246).

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

June 8, 1896.

Appeal by plaintiff from an order of the district court for Redwood county, Webber, J., sustaining a demurrer to the complaint. Reversed.

S. L. Pierce and John Lind, for appellant.

John H. Bowers and Somerville & Olsen, for respondents.

MITCHELL, J.

Written publications calculated to expose one to public contempt or ridicule, and thus induce an ill opinion of him, and impair him in the good opinion and respect of others, are libelous, although they involve no imputation of crime, and are actionable without any allegation of special damages. Holston v. Boyle, 46 Minn. 432, 49 N. W. 203; Dressel v. Shipman, 57 Minn. 23, 58 N. W. 684; Wilkes v. Shields, 62 Minn. 426, 64 N. W. 921. This doctrine is as old as the law of libel itself. Cropp v. Tilney, 3 Salk. 225. In this respect, libel differs from slander, where the law, in respect to our natural passions, gives no action for mere defamatory words, which it considers as transitory abuse, and not having substance and body enough to constitute an injury by affecting the reputation.

Applying this principle, and construing the language employed in the sense in which people would ordinarily understand it, we think that the article was clearly libelous. The purpose of holding up the plaintiff as an object of ridicule — one of the most potent shafts of the libeler — before the public is apparent in every line. The article, by plain insinuation, if not in direct words, charges the plaintiff with disreputable conduct well calculated to impair the good opinion and respect of others towards him. It is written in that bantering and flippant style so well calculated to expose a man to public contempt and ridicule. In several places it applies the prefix "Hon." to plaintiff's name, evidently used ironically, with the apparent purpose of suggesting the idea that the writer meant "dishonorable." It clearly charges the plaintiff, by insinuation, with the dishonorable act, for selfish purposes of his own, of professing a friendship which he did not entertain, for "the possible delegate," and, having thus gotten him "in charge," so generously treating him with intoxicating liquors as to get him into a besotted condition, and then turning him over to his coadjutor at the courthouse, "without warranting his future conduct," where occurred that disgusting scene so artfully touched up by that...