Lyon v. Lash
Decision Date | 08 December 1906 |
Docket Number | 14,767 |
Citation | 88 P. 262,74 Kan. 745 |
Parties | MELINDA V. LYON v. GOLDIE E. LASH |
Court | Kansas Supreme Court |
Decided July, 1906.
Error from Sedgwick district court; THOMAS C. WILSON, judge.
Judgment affirmed.
SYLLABUS BY THE COURT.
LIBEL--Defamatory Letter--Publication. Where a person writes a defamatory letter and sends it in a sealed envelope, through the United States mail, to the person defamed thereby, who receives it and reads the contents thereof to a third person, such reading will not constitute a publication of the libel by the writer thereof for the purposes of a civil action.
Adams & Adams, for plaintiff in error.
John D Davis, for defendant in error
OPINION
This action was commenced in the district court of Sedgwick county for the purpose of recovering damages on account of an alleged libel. The defendant filed a general demurrer to the petition, which was sustained. The plaintiff stood upon her pleading, and judgment was entered against her for costs. To reverse the ruling she brings the case here for review. The libelous matter complained of is contained in a letter which reads:
The extrinsic circumstances explanatory of the language used in the letter, as nearly as they can be gathered from the allegations of the petition and the letter itself, are substantially, that W. H. Lyon died, leaving an estate; Elmina Lyon is his widow, Melinda V. Lyon his daughter, and the defendant the daughter of his son William. The...
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Lunz v. Neuman, 33271
...is not published by the communication thereof to the defamed person alone. 3 Restatement, Torts, 192, § 577, comment b; Lyon v. Lash, 1906, 74 Kan. 745, 747, 88 P. 262. If respondent's statements in his applications for employment contained defamatory information, the publication of the def......
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Buckwalter v. Gossow
... ... Moon , 64 Vt. 450, 24 A. 244, 15 L. R. A. 760, 33 Am ... St. Rep. 936.) ... We have ... adopted the rule as above stated. (Lyon v. Lash, 74 ... Kan. 745, 88 P. 262.) But this is not the rule in criminal ... prosecutions for libel, where the gravamen of the offense is ... as ... ...
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State v. Lund
...for such publication as is the natural and probable consequence of his own act (25 Cyc. 430; 18 A. & E. Encycl. of L. 1018; Lyon v. Lash, 74 Kan. 745, 88 P. 262), and it may conceded that the defendant was not bound to anticipate that a husband would exhibit such a letter to his wife. But g......