Case ID: ny_236/html/0536-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Evelyn C. Scott, Respondent, v. Press Publishing Company, Appellant.
    
      Libel — ■publication in newspaper of article falsely describing plaintiff, under her former stage name, as a dissipated and disreputable woman — defense that publication was fair report of judicial proceeding following arrest of a woman giving name formerly used by plaintiff as stage name.
    
    
      Scott v. Press Publishing Co., 203 App. Div. 894, affirmed.
    (Argued April 23, 1923;
    decided May 8, 1923.)
    Appeal from a judgment of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the first judicial department, entered November 28, 1922, afixrming a judgment in favor of plaintiff entered upon a verdict in an action for libel. The complaint alleged that defendant published in one of its papers an article purporting to describe an incident which took place in a Magistrate’s Court of the city of New York wherein plaintiff, under her former stage name, was falsely described as living a dissipated and disreputable life. The defendant’s amended answer, in addition to a general denial of the material allegations of the complaint, set forth certain affirmative defenses, to wit, that of privilege based upon a fair and substantially true report of a judicial proceeding and a partial defense in mitigation and also reduction of damages setting forth the history .of the plaintiff’s career, and the appropriation by the woman in the Night Court of the plaintiff’s life story and the name “Evelyn Granville,” which led to the publication-complained of. The amended answer then alleged .and set forth the subsequent publication by defendant of a retraction.
    
      Charles B. Brophy for appellant.
    
      Andrew Byrne and Mirábeau L. Towns for respondent.
   Judgment affirmed, with costs; no opinion.

Concur: Hiscock, Ch. J., Hogan, Pound, McLaughlin, Crane and Andrews, JJ. Absent: Cardozo, J.