Wallis v. Walker
| Decision Date | 12 February 1889 |
| Citation | 11 S.W. 123 |
| Parties | WALLIS <I>v.</I> WALKER. |
| Court | Texas Supreme Court |
McLeMore & Campbell and G. E. Mann, for appellant. George Mason, for appellee.
The original petition set out that defendant on the 2d day of February, 1886, "wickedly intending to injure the plaintiff, did maliciously compose and publish of and concerning the plaintiff a certain false, scandalous, and defamatory libel in writing, containing, among other things, the false, scandalous, and defamatory matter following, that is to say." Here follows a copy of parts of the writing, charging the president and directors of the Island City Ice Company with a course of mismanagement unknown to and concealed from the stockholders, calculated to injure and destroy the value of the stock, to serve their own purposes, and benefit themselves, and to injure all the other stockholders not in the scheme. Another part of the writing was also set out in the petition, which charges that the president of the company, with the assent of the directors, encouraged large sales of ice and beer, knowing that such a course was sure to produce great loss to the stockholders, for the purpose of depreciating the capital stock of the company so it might be bought at low figures, and thus control the affairs of the company to make a real or pretended debt upon the same, and to sell the same to their own advantage, to the wrong and injury of the small stockholders, and deprive them of the value of their stock. There are innuendoes showing that plaintiff was meant as one of the persons in the league to defraud the small shareholders. The petitioner claims $10,000 for injury to his character, and $5,000 injury to his business as a wholesale grocer. It is then alleged that defendant on the same day, in conversation with persons named and others, upon malice falsely published and spoke of and concerning plaintiff the same false and scandalous words before set out, and spoke the same exactly, word for word, as contained in the libel. No damages are here claimed for such speaking of the slanderous matter. In another count of the petition defendant is alleged to have published of and concerning plaintiff, in conversations with persons named, that plaintiff and other directors of the company "had been guilty of fraud in their management of business of the Island City Ice Company, and had obtained stock of the company by fraud and false pretenses," and "had combined to defraud the small stockholders out of the property of the company, and convert the property to their own use;" and also "that plaintiff and others had falsified the books of the company for the purpose of concealing the true financial condition of the company," and "that plaintiff and others had depreciated the stock of the company intentionally by mismanaging the affairs of the company for that purpose, in order to buy up the stock and get possession of the property of the company." Damages are laid under this count at $2,000 injury to plaintiff's good name, and $2,000 injury to his business. The court sustained special exceptions to the petition on the ground that the whole paper containing the libelous matters should be set out; that the petition should show how...
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