Johnson v. St. Louis Dispatch Co.

• Decision Date: 31 October 1877
• Citation: 65 Mo. 539
• Parties: JOHNSON v. ST. LOUIS DISPATCH COMPANY, APPELLANT.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

65 Mo. 539

JOHNSON

v.ST. LOUIS DISPATCH COMPANY, APPELLANT.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

October Term, 1877.

Appeal from St. Louis Court of Appeals. The case will be found reported in 2 Mo. App. Rep. 565.

Marshall & Barclay for appellant.

Lee & Adams and Henderson & Shields for respondent.

HENRY, J.

This was a suit commenced in the circuit court of St. Louis county to recover damages for an alleged libel, published in the St. Louis Dispatch, a newspaper owned and published in the city of St. Louis. The following was the publication:

“Then there was H. B. Johnson, who disgraced the office now filled by H. Clay Ewing. He was once accused of stealing a stud horse in Lafayette county. He sued the party of accusers, and at the trial, where four federal officeholders made a part of the jury, a verdict was brought in for the defendant.”

There was a demurrer to the petition on the ground that it did not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action, and the point relied upon was that the foregoing publication did not charge a criminal offense. The demurrer was sustained at special term. On appeal to general term the judgment was reversed, from which defendant appealed to the Court of Appeals, where the judgment of the general term was affirmed, and defendant prosecuted an appeal to this court.

1. LIBEL: Charge of grand larceny.

That the publication imputed the crime of grand larceny to the defendant is clear. That is the obvious import of the language. In Button v. Heyward, 8 Mod. 24, Pratt, C. J., said, “We are to understand words in the same sense as the hearers understand them, but when words stand indifferent and are equally liable to two distinct interpretations, we ought to construe them in mitiori sensu, but we will never make any exposition against the plain, natural import of the words.” In The King v. Watson et al., 2 T. R. 199, Mr. Justice Buller said: “upon occasions of this sort I have never adopted any other rule than that frequently stated by Lord Mansfield to juries, desiring them to read the paper stated to be a libel and say whether in their minds it conveys the sense imputed.” The language here was but a publication to the world that plaintiff had been accused of stealing a horse and that he instituted a suit to recover damages for slander and that the jury found him guilty by finding a verdict for defendant. It alleges that plaintiff has disgraced the office he had filled. How? He was accused of stealing a stud horse in Lafayette county, and sued for damages, and, on a trial by jury, their verdict was for the defendant. What is the inference which men of common understanding would draw from the language? Clearly that plaintiff had stolen the horse. Those good citizens who read the publication and believed it to be true, would have shunned the plaintiff as one tainted with an infamous crime. If such language be not actionable, a newspaper may libel a man with impunity. In Delany v. Jones, 4 East P. C. 191, the publication was as follows:

“This is to request that if any printer or other person can ascertain that James Delany, Esq., some years since residing at Cork, late lieutenant in the North Lincoln Militia, was married previous to nine o'clock in the morning of the tenth of August, 1799, they will give notice &c., and receive the reward.” Lord Ellenborough left it to the jury to say whether the advertisement imputed a charge of bigamy to the plaintiff. The stereotyped formulas of slander, “they say,” “it is...