Warner Instrument Co. v. Ingersoll

• Decision Date: 11 November 1907
• Citation: 157 F. 311
• Parties: WARNER INSTRUMENT CO. v. INGERSOLL.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

157 F. 311

WARNER INSTRUMENT CO. v. INGERSOLL.

United States Circuit Court, S.D. New York.

November 11, 1907

Samuel E. Darby, for plaintiff.

Rushmore Bisbee, Rogers & Stern (Eldon Bisbee, of counsel), for defendant.

HAZEL District Judge.

I think the complaint sets forth a cause of action, and accordingly the demurrer must be overruled. The particular point is whether the alleged libelous publication in the Horseless Age, defendant's publication, legally injured the property or business of the plaintiff corporation. The rule is well settled that a false and defamatory publication regarding the acts of a corporation are not libelous per se unless the printed words import an indictable offense involving moral turpitude, or such malevolence, misconduct or obloquy as affects the financial standing of the corporation or occasions a pecuniary loss. Reporters' Ass'n v. Sun Printing & Publishing Ass'n, 186 N.Y. 437, 79 N.E. 710. To merely attack or challenge the rectitude of the officers or members of a corporation, and hold them or either of them up to scorn, hatred, contempt, or obloquy for acts done in their official capacity, or which would render them liable to criminal prosecution, does not give the corporation a right of action for libel. Memphis Telephone Co. v. Cumberland Telephone & Telegraph Co., 145 F. 904, 76 C.C.A. 436, and cases cited. The contention of the defendant, however, that the language of the printed article applied only to the agents of the plaintiff, who, in fact, were responsible for the advertisement printed in the defendant's publication and which resulted in the alleged defamatory article under consideration, in my opinion, is not supported by such article. Separately read and unconnected with the entire article, the innuendoes sound like an evident exaggeration but reading the article as a whole the charge that the plaintiff by falsification sought to obtain an improper advantage over its rival in business is clear. In a subtly skillful manner the writer of the article assumed the responsibility for the language contained in the advertisement inserted by the plaintiff in the defendant's publication, and at the same time he denounced the acts of the plaintiff as being 'deliberate false statements concerning the wares of their rivals, for the purpose of seeking an advantage which they had been unable to obtain upon the merits of their own products. ' The article contains...