Halley v. Gregg
| Decision Date | 29 May 1888 |
| Citation | 38 N.W. 416,74 Iowa 563 |
| Parties | HALLEY v. GREGG |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Decided May, 1888
Appeal from Jackson District Court.--HON. A. J. LEFFINGWELL, Judge.
ACTION in three counts to recover damages for libel and slander. A motion to strike out part of the petition, and a demurrer to the several counts or causes of action, were sustained. Plaintiff appeals.
REVERSED.
G. L Johnson and D. A. Wynkoop, for appellant.
No appearance for appellee.
I.
The three counts of the petition were complete in themselves. A separate paragraph was added to the petition, in which it was averred, in substance, that the defendant had repeated the slanderous charges upon which the causes of action were founded. A motion was made to strike out this paragraph as redundant and irrelevant. The motion was properly sustained. It is competent, in actions for slander, to prove a repetition of the slanderous charges, for the purpose of showing malice. Beardsley v. Bridgman, 17 Iowa 290; Schrimper v. Heilman, 24 Iowa 505; Hinkle v Davenport, 38 Iowa 355. But it is wholly unnecessary to plead the repetition of the words. They are merely evidence upon the question of malice.
II. The first count is based upon an alleged libel. It appears from the averments of the petition, in substance, that the plaintiff was a station agent of the Chicago & Northwestern Railway at the village of Nashville, and that the defendant wrote and signed a certain affidavit, and sent it to the superintendent of the railway, in which it was charged that the plaintiff had hired the depot or station-house to two fallen women, for the purpose of carrying on their business therein, for one night, for which he received the sum of two dollars. The second count of the petition is based upon substantially the same words, alleged to have been spoken to certain persons therein named. In the third count it is charged that the defendant spoke of the plaintiff words, in substance, as follows: that he (plaintiff) carried the keys to the Nashville church and used the church for nothing else than a whorehouse. In all the counts there are proper averments of the malice of the defendant, and the falsity of the words, and that the defendant intended thereby to charge the plaintiff with the crime of letting a house for the purposes of prostitution and lewdness. The demurrer was to the effect that the several counts did not aver that the alleged libelous and slanderous words were false and that the action could not be sustained because the libels and slanders did not charge the plaintiff with the commission of any crime, and are therefore not...
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