Hubbard v. Allyn
| Citation | 200 Mass. 166,86 N.E. 356 |
| Parties | HUBBARD v. ALLYN. |
| Decision Date | 24 November 1908 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts |
Green & Bennett, for plaintiff.
F. A Ballou, for defendant.
This is an action of libel for causing the printing in certain newspapers of an article alleged to be false, malicious defamatory and published concerning the plaintiff and likely to injure him in his business, which caused him loss of patronage. The defense is that the statements were true and made without malice, and that the article consisted of fair comment on a matter of public interest. The plaintiff is a baker. The defendant is an instructor in science in the State Normal School, and a member of the board of health of Westfield. Certain samples of vanilla flavoring were taken from the plaintiff by an agent of the board of health of Westfield, which, on analysis by the defendant, were found to contain a dangerous amount of wood alcohol. Thereafter the defendant wrote the article complained of, which, among other statements, contained the following:
The court ruled that the subject was one of public interest, and that the defendant had a legal right to publish fair and reasonable comment thereon without liability. The case comes before us on exceptions by the defendant to the refusal to give certain instructions and as to the admission of evidence.
1. A verdict could not have been directed for the defendant. A reasonable inference from the published article was that the writer asserted that the plaintiff paid $2.75 per gallon for the vanilla found on his premises, which contained the wood alcohol, a dangerously poisonous substance. There was no evidence whatever that the vanilla found on the plaintiff's premises cost him only $2.75 per gallon. The defendant, from his knowledge as to the cost of the several ingredients found to compose this fluid, estimated that it could be bought for that price, but made the assertion without any knowledge or information as to what the plaintiff in fact paid for it. The evidence of the plaintiff, which was uncontradicted, was that he paid $4 per gallon for it. Upon this statement as to price paid by the plaintiff, which the jury may have found to be false, the defendant bases the declaration that the person, who had bought at that price was either 'criminally stupid or deliberately dishonest'; that he was 'absolutely without excuse' for his action, which was also characterized as a 'flagrant violation of public confidence and physical welfare.' These comments and criticisms are wholly deduced from a premise, which the jury might have found to be untrue. It cannot be said, as matter of law, that a verdict could have been ordered for the defendant, who made such a publication touching one whose business was that of furnishing food. The jury would have been warranted in finding that the substantially harmful statement contained in the article was not as to the mere presence of wood alcohol in the vanilla, but that any honest or competent person would know from the low price paid that the vanilla was of such poor quality as to be deleterious to health. Reading the whole statement, the price named was not an unimportant incident, but the pivotal fact on which hung much of the rest. If the jury found this statement of fact to be false, then they would be justified in saying further that the article was not fair comment or reasonable criticism, but an unwarranted attack, whose manifest tendency was to injure the plaintiff in his business. Haynes v. Clinton Printing Co., 169 Mass. 512, 48 N.E. 275. The right of the defendant was not to make false statements of fact because the subject-matter was of public interest, but only to criticise, discuss and comment upon the real acts of the plaintiff and the consequences likely to follow from them, or upon any other aspect of the case in a reasonable way. This may be done with severity. Ridicule, sarcasm, and invective may be employed. But the basis must be a fact, and not a falsehood. Burt v. Advertiser Newspaper Co., 154 Mass. 238, 28 N.E. 1, 13 L. R. A. 97; McQuire v. Western Morning News Co., Ltd. [1903] 2 K. B. 100; Dow v. Long, 190 Mass. 138, 76 N.E. 667; Thomas v. Bradbury, Agnew & Co. Ltd. [1906] 2 K. B. 627.
2. It is argued that there was no evidence that the article was published concerning the plaintiff. The plaintiff's name is not mentioned in the article. The subject of the article is named only as 'one of our local bakeries,' in which 'wood alcohol in the so-called vanilla' had been found, and 'a dealer as in the present case.' It may be conceded, as urged by the defendant that knowledge of the person referred to on the part of the writter and of the plaintiff alone would not be enough to show that it was published of the plaintiff. Such descriptive language must be used as to indicate to others some particular individual under the circumstances existing in the community. It appeared that the plaintiff was the only baker in Westfield, upon whose premises vanilla containing wood alcohol had been found. The agent of the board of health had visited the plaintiff's place to get the samples, and a few days before the article was printed went to his bakery and carried the keg containing the so-called vanilla across a main street of the town to the rooms of the board of health. One witness, a member of the board of health, testified that he knew when he read the article that the plaintiff was referred to. The plaintiff was permitted to testify that, from conversations with customers, he knew that it was understood that he was meant by an article published in a Springfield paper, which used substantially the same descriptive language. This evidence, though perhaps not competent if objected to, nevertheless being in without objection, was entitled to its probative force. Damon v. Carrol, 163 Mass. 404, 40 N.E. 185. It tended to show that such language in the then state of information of the public mind in Westfield would be understood as referring to the plaintiff, and that hence the defendant's article was so understood. The testimony of Raineault, that customers gave this article as a reason for not trading with the plaintiff, the exception to the admission of which will be discussed later, also had the same tendency. If competent for any purpose, it is not rendered incompetent by the fact that it also has a tendency to influence the mind in another direction, for which alone it would not ben competent. Whipple v. Rich, 180 Mass. 477, 63 N.E. 5; Weston v. Barnicoat, ...
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