Quinn v. Prudential Ins. Co. of Am.

• Decision Date: 13 May 1902
• Parties: QUINN v. PRUDENTIAL INS. CO. OF AMERICA.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

116 Iowa 522

90 N.W. 349

QUINN

v.PRUDENTIAL INS. CO. OF AMERICA.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

May 13, 1902.

Appeal from district court, Dubuque county; Fred O'Donnell, Judge.

Appeal from judgment for damages on account of an alleged libel. The facts are more particularly stated in the opinion. Reversed.Andrew P. Gibbs, for appellant.

George A. Barnes, for appellee.

WEAVER, J.

The plaintiff's petition is stated in five counts, each based on an alleged libel. In each count the matter alleged by way of colloquium or inducement, the form of the alleged libel, and the innuendoes thereto attached, are stated in the following form, varied only by the name and date of the newspaper in which the publication was made: “That the defendant is a corporation organized under the laws of the state of New Jersey, and has a branch office in the building known as the ‘Security Building,’ in the city of Dubuque, Iowa, and, at the time of the happening of the grievances hereinafter complained of, one D. Zimmerman was the superintendent of said branch office; that the business of said defendant is that of insuring the lives of individuals. Plaintiff further says that, at and before the time of the happening of the grievances hereinafter complained of, he was also engaged in the insurance business, and occupied rooms in the same building as defendant. Plaintiff further says that he has always sustained a good character, and been reputed and accepted in the community to be a person of good name, fame, and credit, and never suspected of having been guilty of fraud, or the crime of obtaining money under false pretenses, yet said defendant, well knowing the premises, and maliciously intending to injure the said plaintiff, and to expose him to public hatred, contempt, and ridicule, and to deprive him of the benefits of public confidence, and to bring him into public scandal and disgrace among his neighbors, did on the 9th day of November, 1898, falsely, wickedly, and maliciously publish and cause to be published of and concerning the said plaintiff, in the Dubuque Daily Telegraph, a newspaper of general circulation in the city of Dubuque, Iowa, a certain false, scandalous, and malicious libel, as follows: ‘Notice. I herewith inform the public that Pat Quinn, Jr.’ (meaning plaintiff), ‘formerly an agent for me, is no longer employed in any capacity by the Prudential Insurance Co. Nor has he been for the past year. Our policy holders are hereby notified not to pay him any premiums' (meaning thereby that this plaintiff had been collecting premiums from the policy holders of defendant since he ceased to be in its employ), ‘but to pay to my authorized agents, or at my office. D. Zimmerman, Supt., Security Building.’ ” This is followed in each instance by other allegations of injury alleged to have been sustained by reason of such libelous publication. By an amendment filed at a later date it is alleged that Zimmerman, in publishing the notice complained of, acted with authority from the defendant, and that, after the publication, plaintiff notified defendant of the same, and that defendant impliedly ratified and approved Zimmerman's act. The defendant demurred to each count of the petition on the ground that the language of the publication complained of is not libelous. This demurrer being overruled, the defendant excepted, but answered and went to trial, which resulted in a verdict for plaintiff for $500. Many errors are assigned, but we do not find it necessary to consider them all.

1. Is the verdict supported by sufficient evidence? Briefly defined, libel is the malicious defamation of a person, made public by any printing, writing, effigy, or pictorial representation. For a written or printed article to be defamatory, the language of the document must be such that, when given its natural and ordinary meaning, it imputes to the person thus assailed some act or attribute or character which tends to expose him to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule, or to deprive him of the benefits of public confidence and social intercourse; or if the language, upon its face, does not bear such injurious significance, then there must be shown extrinsic facts and circumstances by which it is made to appear that the writing, though innocent and unobjectionable in form, is intended to convey and does convey to its readers a defamatory meaning, as above defined. The manner of pleading a charge of slander or libel has been much simplified by our Code (section 3592), which renders it unnecessary to set out any extrinsic facts for the purpose of showing the application of the defamatory matter to the plaintiff, and makes it sufficient to state the defamatory sense in which the language was used, and that the same was spoken or published concerning the plaintiff. This, in effect, renders unnecessary any statement in the pleadings of the matter formerly called the “inducement” or “colloquium,” but preserves, in effect, the innuendo, which explains the words spoken or written, and annexes them to their proper meaning. Bloss v. Tobey, 2 Pick. 320;Bathrick v. Tribune Co., 50 Mich. 629, 16 N. W. 172, 45 Am. Rep. 63. Where the language is of itself plainly defamatory, no innuendo is required, for the words speak for themselves. It is properly employed only where the alleged slanderous words are ambiguous or of doubtful signification, or where, by reason of extrinsic facts and circumstances, the words express a covert or unusual meaning. Over v. Schiffling, 102 Ind. 191, 26 N. E. 91;Richmond v. Post, 69 Minn. 457, 72 N. W. 704;Com. v. Morgan, 107 Mass. 199;Mason v. Mason, 4 N. H. 113;Belknap v. Ball, 83 Mich. 583, 47 N. W. 674, 11 L. R. A. 72, 21 Am. St. Rep. 622;Kinyon v. Palmer, 18 Iowa, 377;Hess v. Fockler, 25 Iowa, 9. On the other hand, if the words are not in any proper sense ambiguous or doubtful, and, in their ordinary and proper signification, convey no defamatory meaning, it is a rule of nearly universal acceptance that such meaning can neither be enlarged nor restricted by innuendo. McLaughlin v. Fisher, 136 Ill. 111, 24 N. E. 60;Lewis v. Soule, 3 Mich. 514; Camp v. Martin, 23 Conn. 92; McFadin v. David, 78 Ind. 445, 41 Am. Rep. 587;Frank v. Dunning, 38 Wis. 270;Simons v. Burnham, 102 Mich. 189, 60 N. W. 476;Shaffer v. Kintzer, 2 Am. Dec. 488;Pelton v. Ward, 3 Caines, 73, 2 Am. Dec. 251;Van Vechten v. Hopkins, 5 Johns. 211, 4 Am. Dec. 339. Under this rule, and under the law as recognized and followed in every other state to which our attention has been called, the language of the publication of which complaint is here made is not libelous, nor can it be made libelous by innuendo. Whether our statute already cited has the effect to modify this principle, or restrict its application in this state, it is unnecessary for us now to decide. It is plain, however, that, if the statute exempts the plaintiff from the necessity of pleading the specific facts and circumstances by which language otherwise harmless is shown to be defamatory, it does not exempt him from proving them upon the trial. For instance, it would be manifestly improper for the plaintiff to allege and prove the publication of an article which, when fairly construed, has no defamatory meaning, and then make his case by putting witnesses on the stand to swear that they understood it in a defamatory sense. He must in such case, it seems to us, show extrinsic facts or circumstances in the past or present relations of the parties, or surrounding the publication, by which the jury shall be justified in giving to words not ordinarily actionable a slanderous or libelous signification.

Assuming, then, that the petition shows a cause of action, we have to say that we think no libel is shown by the evidence. As we have already said,...