Robertson v. Edelstein

• Decision Date: 07 November 1899
• Citation: 104 Wis. 440,80 N.W. 724
• Parties: ROBERTSON v. EDELSTEIN.
• Court: Wisconsin Supreme Court

104 Wis. 440

80 N.W. 724

ROBERTSON

v.EDELSTEIN.

Supreme Court of Wisconsin.

Nov. 7, 1899.

Appeal from circuit court, Douglas county; A. J. Vinje, Judge.

Action by Gertrude Robertson against Morris Edelstein. There was a judgment for defendant, and plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

Appeal from judgment for defendant entered upon sustaining a demurrer ore tenus to the complaint, which alleges that the defendant, at the city of Superior, on May 14, 1898, in the presence of others, maliciously uttered of the plaintiff the words: “Get out of here, you son of a bitch. I know you are nothing but a damned old bitch,”--and meant thereby that the plaintiff was a common whore and prostitute, had been and was guilty of the crime of adultery with different men, and was addicted to promiscuous sexual intercourse. The plaintiff further alleged that the word “bitch,” when spoken of a woman in said city of Superior, is commonly understood to mean a whore or prostitute, and commonly implies that the person of whom it is spoken has been and is such, and is guilty of promiscuous sexual intercourse and unchaste conduct, of which the defendant had knowledge, and meant so to charge, and that the words were so understood by the hearers.O'Brien & Vaughn, for appellant.

Crownhart & Foley, for respondent.

DODGE, J. (after stating the facts).

There is abundant authority, as intimated in Clute v. Clute, 101 Wis. 137, 76 N. W. 1114, for the proposition that a word may have a local or cant meaning other than its general and accepted significance, and that, if it be used and understood in such meaning, so that it does in fact charge the plaintiff with the commission of a crime, its use may be slander, as much as the use of a word which, in proper significance, charges such crime. This rule, however, should be cautiously applied. The law is well settled, and based on the experience and wisdom of centuries, that an action of slander ought not to be maintained for mere abuse and villification, in the absence of actual special damage. Such is not its purpose, and the maintenance of such actions, therefore, would lead to a vast amount of unwise and unfortunate litigation. The law has wisely drawn the limitation, with exceptions not here material, at the point of charging a criminal offense by spoken words, and should not, by refinement, be extended beyond that point. An assertion merely of libidinous tendencies or general lewd conduct is not sufficient.K_____ v. H_____, 20 Wis. 239. Our language is full of words and expressions which are ambiguous, and which may mean one thing or another,--which may convey the idea of specific crime, but which ordinarily do not. The general and established meaning of a word is, of course, that which is to be presumed in any and all communities, and an allegation that the word has a certain peculiar and unusual meaning in certain localities can ordinarily mean no more than that it may have that meaning in addition to its proper and usual one. It imputes local ambiguity to a word otherwise single in meaning. The lexiconic significance of words of our own language is matter of judicial knowledge because of common knowledge. The allegations of this complaint, therefore, cannot be taken to mean that the word in question has been entirely transposed in its use in the city of Superior so as not to have that force which its use for centuries has given it in the English language, but merely that, in addition, and under some circumstances, it has the other more specific and criminal meaning. The particular word complained of has been many times the subject of discussion by courts, and its general and primary force and effect have been stated, as they were by this court in K_____ v. H_____, supra, to signify merely reproach or abuse, and not to convey a charge of any specific crime. Schurich v. Kollman, 50 Ind. 336;Logan v. Logan, 77 Ind. 558;Claypool v. Claypool, 56 Ill. App. 17;Riddell v. Thayer, 127 Mass. 490;Craig v. Pyles (Ky.) 39 S. W. 33;Blake v. Smith, 19 R. I. 476, 34 Atl. 995. The effect, therefore, of the allegations, by way of inducement, as to the meaning of the word in Superior, is no more than that it is there ambiguous, and may have the criminal meaning. The meaning and significance with which it was in fact used cannot be extended beyond its ordinary and usual significance by innuendo, or an allegation of what was the meaning in fact. Clute v. Clute, supra. It therefore must become the duty of the court, before submitting the question to the jury, to examine the...