Fabian v. Amerikai Magyar SZO (Hungarian Word Inc.)

• Decision Date: 16 February 1960
• Citation: Fabian v. Amerikai Magyar SZO (Hungarian Word Inc.), 198 N.Y.S.2d 751, 22 Misc.2d 317 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1960)
• Parties: Bela FABIAN, Plaintiff, v. AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO (HUNGARIAN WORD INC.) Defendant.
• Court: New York Supreme Court

Page 751

198 N.Y.S.2d 751

22 Misc.2d 317

Bela FABIAN, Plaintiff, v. AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO (HUNGARIAN WORD INC.) Defendant.

Supreme Court, Special Term, New York County, Part I.

Feb. 16, 1960.

Roy M. Cohn, New York City (John A. Kiser, New York City, of counsel), for plaintiff.

Freedman & Unger, New York City, for defendant.

JOSEPH A. GAVAGAN, Justice.

This is a motion in an action for libel to dismiss the complaint for insufficiency. The defendant publishes a Hungarian language weekly newspaper in New York City and other cities in the United States. The plaintiff is the chairman of an organization known as the Federation of Hungarian Former Political Prisoners. The action arises out of the report in the defendant's newspaper on the visit to the United States in January, 1959 of Anastas I. Mikoyan, First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union. The alleged defamatory statement, as translated in the complaint, reads as follows: 'A few contemptuous Magyars, obtainable for anything, tried to disturb Mikoyan's friendly reception and polluted the air at the airport as well as before the State Department Building.' The complaint alleges further that the defendant intended, and was so understood by readers of the newspaper, to refer to the plaintiff, who was the leader of pickets protesting the visit of the Soviet official; that the defendant intended to expose the plaintiff to hatred, contempt, ridicule or aversion; that the statement was false and defamatory and defendant knew that it was false and defamatory; and that plaintiff suffered damage to his reputation.

The chief challenge to the complaint is that the words alleged are not libelous. Relying on the authority of Luft v. Hoffman, 201 Misc. 384, 116 N.Y.S.2d 343, the defendant argues that the words 'obtainable for anything' are too vague to be defamatory and that the complaint should be dismissed. Contrary defendant's argument, however, Special Term in the Luft case sustained a cause of action for slander arising out of the utterance that the plaintiff therein 'is the lowest type of woman'. The defendant cites other cases sounding in slander and thus disregards the well-settled principle that libel, unlike slander, is 'actionable without alleging special damages if it tends to expose the plaintiff to public contempt ridicule, aversion, or disgrace, or induce an evil opinion of him in the minds of right-thinking persons, and to deprive him of their friendly intercourse in society' (Sydney v. MacFadden Newspaper Pub. Corp., 242 N.Y. 208, 211, 212, 151 N.E. 209, 210, 44 A.L.R. 1419; see Ostrowe v. Lee, 256 N.Y. 36, 175 N.E. 505; cf. Hyatt v. Salisbury, 207 Misc. 785, 143 N.Y.S.2d 162; Bolton v. Strawbridge, Sup., 156 N.Y.S.2d 722).

Required to construe 'the defamatory publication in determining its characteristics and result in the same way that the reading public, acquainted with the parties and the subject, would take it' (Sydney v. MacFadden Newspaper Pub. Co., supra, 242...