Prystash v. Best Medium Pub. Co.
| Decision Date | 28 January 1969 |
| Citation | 157 Conn. 507,254 A.2d 872 |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
| Parties | Jeanne M. PRYSTASH v. BEST MEDIUM PUBLISHING COMPANY, Inc. |
Howard R. Steeg, Bristol, for appellant (plaintiff).
David T. Ryan, Hartford, with whom was Robert M. Fitz-Gerald, Litchfield, for appellee (defendant).
Before KING, C.J., and ALCORN, HOUSE, THIM and RYAN, JJ.
The plaintiff brought this action against the defendant, seeking to recover damages claimed to have been sustained as a result of embarrassment, ridicule and injury to her reputation occasioned by the publication of her photograph in connection with a news story concerning the commission of a felony by another woman. The complaint was in two counts, the first count claiming damages for an invasion of the plaintiff's right of privacy and the second count claiming damages for libel. Following a jury trial, the plaintiff recovered a verdict on the first count. The verdict on the second count was in favor of the defendant. The court denied that plaintiff's motion to set aside the verdict, and the plaintiff has appealed from the judgment rendered on the verdict, assigning error in the denial of the motion to set aside the verdict, in the finding, in the charge and in three rulings on evidence.
The error assigned in the denial of the motion to set aside the verdict is that the damages awarded by the jury on the first count are inadequate and that the verdict on the second count is not supported by the evidence. Since the verdict on the second count was in favor of the defendant, the plaintiff's claim that it was not supported by the evidence must be construed as an assertion that the evidence was such as to require a verdict for the plaintiff on that count. A claim that a verdict is not supported by the evidence is tested by the evidence printed in the appendices to the briefs. Wright v. Coe & Anderson, Inc., 156 Conn. 145, 157, 239 A.2d 493. The plaintiff has printed no evidence in an appendix to her brief, and consequently she furnishes us no basis for testing the claim that the verdict in the defendant's favor on the second count is not supported by the evidence. The attack on the adequacy of the verdict on the first count raises the question whether the verdict fell somewhere within the necessarily uncertain limits of just damages or whether the size of the verdict so shocks the sense of justice as to compel the conclusion that the jury were influenced by partiality, prejudice, mistake, or corruption. Hook v. Dubuque, 153 Conn. 113, 115, 214 A.2d 376. No special damages were claimed in either count. The only general damages claimed in either count were those arising from the embarrassment, ridicule and injury to the plaintiff's reputation which were alleged to have been caused by the publication. In finding in the plaintiff's favor on the count based on an invasion of her right of privacy, the jury were required to, and did, evaluate the damage which the plaintiff proved that she had sustained in the respects alleged. Here again, the plaintiff, owing to the lack of any appendix to her brief, has failed to furnish any evidence with which we may test the adequacy of the verdict.
The sufficiency of the charge is tested by the claims of proof in the finding. State v. Mallette, 153 Conn. 584, 587, 219 A.2d 447. The finding, which is not subject to correction, recites that the plaintiff offered evidence to prove and claimed to have proved that the defendant is a New York corporation which publishes a weekly tabloid which is claimed to have a reading public of more than six million people. The defendant does not employ reporters but purchases stories for publication. One issue of its publication contained a photograph of the plaintiff bearing the name of another person and accompanied by a news story captioned 'Mom Leaves Hospital With Newborn Baby But Abandons Infant Before She Gets Home.' The story related the abandonment of a child by the named person and her subsequent conviction and sentencing for a felony. The defendant had purchased the story from an organization which, in turn, had purchased it from a reporter in Connecticut. The defendant made no investigation of the facts or of the accompanying photograph before publication. The plaintiff was not the person described in the article, was never married, nor a mother, but lived as a single girl with her mother and sister in Terryville. The photograph of the plaintiff was obtained, used and published by the defendant without the plaintiff's knowledge, approval or consent, and 66,750 copies of the paper containing it were distributed in Connecticut. Of this number, 212 were distributed, and 165 were sold, in Terryville. The plaintiff, who had never been arrested, had her attention called to the publication by her mother, who in turn had been told of it by another person. The plaintiff was upset by the publication, was ridiculed and embarrassed by associates and received annoying telephone calls following the publication. The plaintiff consulted an attorney, who demanded a retaction by the defendant, and about three months later a correction was published expressing regret for the inadvertent use of the photograph and apologizing for any inconvenience caused to the plaintiff. The plaintiff testified that she never saw the retraction because it was so small.
The defendant offered evidence to prove and claimed to have proved that the article...
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Tough v. Ives
...of unnecessary retrials. No exception was taken to the charge, and we find no error. Practice Book § 249; Prystash v. Best Medium Publishing Co., 157 Conn. 507, 512, 254 A.2d 872; Towhill v. Kane, 147 Conn. 191, 193, 158 A.2d 251; D'Addario v. American Automobile Ins. Co., 142 Conn. 251, 25......
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Neal v. Shiels, Inc.
...exceptions were taken. This alone would be dispositive of this assignment of error. Practice Book § 249; Prystash v. Best Medium Publishing Co., 157 Conn. 507, 511-512, 254 A.2d 872. The defendants claim that the court erred in submitting to the jury the allegation, '(f) IN THAT he violated......
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Goodrich v. Waterbury Republican-American, Inc.
...to us in previous cases, none of those claims was appropriate for the inquiry we undertake today. See Prystash v. Best Medium Publishing Co., 157 Conn. 507, 511-13, 254 A.2d 872 (1969) (procedural defects prevented review of plaintiff's verdict for invasion of privacy); Urban v. Hartford Ga......
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State v. Peary
...which would permit the court to make a correction. Error cannot be predicated on such ambiguous exceptions. Prystash v. Best Medium Publishing Co., 157 Conn. 507, 512, 254 A.2d 872; Worden v. Francis, 148 Conn. 459, 461, 172 A.2d 196. To the extent that the defendant's claim may be of const......