Swanson v. Speidel Corp.
| Decision Date | 11 July 1972 |
| Docket Number | No. 1604-A,1604-A |
| Citation | 110 R.I. 335,293 A.2d 307 |
| Parties | Philip SWANSON v. SPEIDEL CORPORATION et al. ppeal. |
| Court | Rhode Island Supreme Court |
This case is here on the plaintiff's appeal from an order which was entered following the granting of the defendants' motion for judgment on the pleadings by a justice of the Superior Court.
The plaintiff, a former employee of Speidel Corporation, brought a defamation action against Speidel and various employees of Speidel for repeated publications of defamatory allegations concerning his working habits and honesty to prospective employers of plaintiff. In his amended complaint plaintiff alleges that either or both of his former supervisors, defendants Joseph Ferreira and Hillary Woodhouse, upon his resignation from the company, wrote a termination notice to Speidel's Personnel Department; that the termination notice was and is kept in the firm's files and read to an inquirer over the telephone; and that thereafter on various occasions, within one year prior to the date of the amended complaint, upon receipt of telephone inquiries of prospective employers of the plaintiff, defendant Christine Lomastro and other employees of Speidel read portions of the above-mentioned 'termination notice' over the telephone, to wit, the following:
'* * * that the plaintiff was a 'chronic absentee', indifferent, irresponsible, needed constant supervision, and that the plaintiff would not be rehired by the defendant corporation and had poor attendance.'
The amended complaint, after stating that such charges were untrue, further alleges:
'* * * the charges so made in the aforementioned 'termination notice', printed, published, republished and spoken by the defendants were printed, published, republished and circulated with express and implied malice and with design or intent to injure plaintiff in his good name, reputation and employment, and were in every particular false, misleading, defamatory, libelous, unprivileged and without legal excuse.'
The defendants, without filing an answer, filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings pursuant to Super.R.Civ.P. 12(c) 1 on the ground that the alleged communications were privileged and also on the ground that plaintiff failed to allege that the defamatory communications occurred within the one-year period prior to suit as provided in G.L.1956 (1969 Reenactment) § 9-1-14. The defendants waived the latter ground and, after hearing, the Superior Court justice granted defendants' motion for judgment on the pleadings. The trial justice, in so ruling, apparently relied on Ponticelli v. Mine Safety Appliance Co., 104 R.I. 549, 247 A.2d 303 (1968). The plaintiff then filed this appeal. He contends that the trial justice erred in granting defendants' motion. We agree with plaintiff and therefore reverse.
We consider initially plaintiff's argument that because of defendants' failure to file an answer to the complaint it may have been improper to grant defendants' motion for judgment on the pleadings. There is no merit to this argument. As Professor Kent points out in his commentary to Rule 12(c) in 1 Kent, R.I.Civ.Prac., § 12.13 at 118, when a motion for judgment on the pleadings is made by the defendant, such a motion is normally an attack upon the sufficiency of the complaint and is thus, in effect, a Super.R.Civ.P. 12(b) (6) motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. The allegations of the complaint are taken as true and for the purposes of such a motion to dismiss, the complaint should be viewed in the light most favorable to plaintiff, and no complaint will be deemed insufficient unless it is clear beyond a reasonable doubt that the plaintiff will be unable to prove his right to relief, that is, unless it appears to a certainty that he will not be entitled to relief under any set of facts which might be proved in support of his claim. Bragg v. Warwick Shoppers World, Inc., 102 R.I. 8, 227 A.2d 582 (1967). On this record the filing of an answer was not required to close the pleadings-this was in effect accomplished by defendants' motion. We now proceed to consider this appeal in the light of these guidelines.
We consider next the question whether the alleged defamatory allegations in plaintiff's complaint were conditionally privileged. We address ourselves first to the intra-company communications, that is, the written termination notice sent by plaintiff's superiors to Speidel's Personnel Department. We believe that with respect to these, Ponticelli, supra, is dispositive, and, therefore, no prolonged discussion is necessary other than to say that the trial justice was warranted in concluding that the intra-company communications as alleged in plaintiff's complaint were conditionally privileged. As we said in Ponticelli, the determination of whether on the particular facts of a given case the privilege exists is exclusively legal and is for the court, and not for the jury. Whether plaintiff's allegation of malice defeats the privilege in this case we defer until later in this opinion.
The next question is whether the qualified privilege which we have held exists between the employer and the employees of the same employer applies to a communication by a former employer to a prospective employer in regard to an employee's work characteristics. The plaintiff specifically alleges that the information was given to inquiring prospective employers. The plaintiff contends that the 'reciprocity of duty' which we spoke about in Ponticelli does not apply to defamatory communications between a former employer and a prospective employer. In Ponticelli we said:
'Correlatively, of course, there must be a reciprocity of duty between the publisher and the person to whom the publication is addressed, and the circumstances should reasonably demonstrate that the recipients have an interest in receiving it corresponding to that of the publisher in making it.' 104 R.I. at 551, 247 A.2d at 306.
The plaintiff contends that the 'reciprocity of duty' between an employer, fellow employees, and superior...
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...since the employer had an interest in deterring future padding and the employees benefitted from the warning. In Swanson v. Speidel Corp., 110 R.I. 335, 293 A.2d 307 (1972), the potential employer who was informed of the grounds for discharge had an interest in knowing the discharged employ......
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Miron v. University of New Haven Police, 17596.
...466-68, 589 P.2d 1056 (1978); Walsh v. Consolidated Freightways, Inc., 278 Or. 347, 355, 563 P.2d 1205 (1977); Swanson v. Speidel Corp., 110 R.I. 335, 340, 293 A.2d 307 (1972); Pioneer Concrete of Texas, Inc. v. Allen, 858 S.W.2d 47, 49 (Tex.App.1993); Bankhead v. Tacoma, 23 Wash.App. 631, ......
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...figures since such disclosure acted as a deterrent to similar conduct in the future. In a subsequent case, Swanson v. Speidel Corporation, 110 R.I. 335, 293 A.2d 307, 310 (R.I.1972), the court stated: "It seems to us that the rationale in Ponticelli should apply with equal force to a situat......