Opinion ID: 2612098
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Plaintiff alleged a sufficient demand for retraction in the manner required by Civil Code section 48a

Text: (6) The Legislature enacted Civil Code section 48a to encourage a more active press by means of an increased insulation of newspapers from liability arising from erroneous published statements. [8] The statute represents a significant change from common law libel, [9] which at one time permitted a plaintiff libelled even by an innocent misstatement to recover general damages without proving actual injury. (See, e.g., Peck v. Tribune Co. (1909) 214 U.S. 185, 189 [53 L.Ed. 960, 962, 29 S.Ct. 554] (Holmes, J.); Taylor v. Hearst (1895) 107 Cal. 262, 269 [40 P. 392].) Under section 48a an individual cannot recover anything beyond special damages [10] unless he shows that he has requested, within 20 days after learning of the publication, that the publisher correct the allegedly libelous material, and that the publisher has failed to do so. The section also provides that the request for correction must be made by a written notice specifying the statements claimed to be libelous.... [11] Although defendant asserts that plaintiff's notice does not sufficiently or specifically satisfy the terms of the statute, we believe that it does so. (7) The purpose of the requirement for the described specificity is to facilitate the publisher's investigative efforts in determining whether statements in the initial article contained error and should be corrected. By designating the remarks that the objector considers libelous, a notice may enable the publisher to narrow the scope of his investigation. We recognize, however, that letters written to request retraction of a statement do not compose formal legal complaints; we cannot expect that they will conform to the niceties of common law pleading. In enacting section 48a the Legislature intended to afford publishers an opportunity to correct committed errors before subjecting them to liability; it did not intend to build technical barricades to recovery by the individual who had given notice sufficient to advise a reasonable publisher acting in good faith of the claimed error. (8) The crucial issue in evaluating the adequacy of the notice turns on whether the publisher should reasonably have comprehended which statements plaintiff protested and wished corrected. ( MacLeod v. Tribune Publishing Co. (1959) 52 Cal.2d 536, 554 [343 P.2d 36].) (9a) The notice in the instant case labelled as libelous, and requested correction of, every statement concerning the conduct of the children of Mrs. Inez Kapellas and every statement concerning Mrs. Kapellas' qualifications for the City Council and her suitability as a mother contained in the specified articles. The first clause of the notice, designating every statement concerning the children's conduct as libelous, is both specific and comprehensible, especially when read in conjunction with the questioned article. The tenth paragraph of the editorial details several instances, appearing on the Alameda police blotter, involving three of the Kapellas children; these are the only statements relating specific actions performed by the children, and the notice's references to statements about the conduct of the children surely was sufficiently clear to inform defendant that it was these pronouncements that were objectionable. Although defendant contends that he could not ascertain that the notice attacked the accuracy of the statements about the children in the police blotter, the notice specified every statement concerning the conduct of the children in the article and should reasonably have been read to include the assertions in the police blotter. [12] In MacLeod v. Tribune Publishing Co., supra, 52 Cal.2d 536, the defendant newspaper had published an article which included an intimation that another journal, a Communist-line paper, had endorsed the plaintiff's candidacy for city office. Applying section 48a, this court upheld the adequacy of plaintiff's demand for correction which, after setting forth the offending article, stated simply: This article is grossly libelous and I therefore demand that the same be corrected or retracted as provided in Section 48(a) of the Civil Code of the State of California. We reasoned that since the original article referred only once to plaintiff the general notice sufficiently informed the publisher that plaintiff objected to the statement that referred to him. In light of the purpose of the specificity requirement of section 48a, we recognized that our concern centered on whether, given the nature of the statements in the article and the notice, the publisher should reasonably have realize[d] what language plaintiff objected to and wished corrected. (52 Cal.2d at p. 554.) [13] Defendant insists that MacLeod should be distinguished from the instant case because the article there was much shorter than the editorial here. The relative length of the article in MacLeod, however, became important only to the extent that it affected the comprehensibility of the notice and the ease of identifying the contested statement; length, in and of itself, cannot be determinative. Since we find that in the instant case the notice's reference to every statement concerning the conduct of the children of Mrs. Kapellas reasonably identifies the instances recounted from the police blotter in the editorial, and that the editorial taken as a whole does not alter the meaning of these statements, the fact that the statements comprise only a part of a longer article does not affect the adequacy of the notice. Defendant further contends, however, that Anderson v. Hearst Publishing Co. (S.D.Cal. 1954) 120 F. Supp. 850, compels the opposite conclusion. In Anderson the allegedly libelous article contained eight separate references to the plaintiff; the plaintiff's demand for correction stated only that the article contained certain statements regarding me which are untrue, libelous and damaging. The federal district court found this notice inadequate. As we noted when commenting on Anderson in MacLeod, the certain statements language failed to give the publisher any indication of the statements to which objections were levelled; on the other hand, the notice in the instant case, specifically directed to the statements concerning the children's conduct, draws a clear distinction from the demand made in Anderson. (52 Cal.2d at p. 553.) Since we uphold the sufficiency of the demand for retraction of the statements concerning the children's conduct, plaintiff would be entitled to maintain her libel action because of defendant's failure to correct these statements even in the face of non-specific additional requests in her notice. As we have pointed out, the crux of the matter lies in the adequacy of the notice to inform the publisher of the objectionable statements. (10) A publisher cannot refuse to correct statements which are specifically identified because of the invalid generality of objections as to other matters not specifically identified. (11a) The second and third clauses of the notice ask for correction of every statement concerning Mrs. Kapellas' qualifications for the City Council and her suitability as a mother. These demands are concededly less specific than the initial one, but, given the nature of the questioned editorials, their imprecision is justifiable. The editorials do not explicitly state that Mrs. Kapellas is not qualified for the city council or that she is an unsuitable mother, but a jury might reasonably find that the language, tone, and format of the editorial imply these conclusions. We have long recognized that false inferences or implications raised by the arrangement and phrasing of apparently non-libelous statements can be as injurious as explicit epithets; we have upheld libel actions founded on such implications. (See, e.g., Bates v. Campbell (1931) 213 Cal. 438, 442 [2 P.2d 383] (A defendant is liable for what is insinuated, as well as for what is stated explicitly); Bettner v. Holt, 70 Cal. 270, 274 [11 P. 713] ([N]ot only is the language employed to be regarded with reference to the actual words used, but according to the sense and meaning under all the circumstances attending the publication which such language may fairly be presumed to have conveyed to those to whom it was published.); Cameron v. Wernick (1967) 251 Cal. App.2d 890, 893 [60 Cal. Rptr. 102]; Williams v. Daily Review, Inc. (1965) 236 Cal. App.2d 405, 411 [46 Cal. Rptr. 135].) (12) When the basis of a claim of libel lies in an implication flowing from the rhetoric of a publication, the allegedly damaging implication frequently cannot be connected to any one statement, or to even a few specific statements, but rather emanates from the tone of the article as a whole. In such an instance, section 48a's requirement of a specific notice must be interpreted in light of the nature of the alleged libel. The mere withdrawal of specific statements may not be adequate to purge the original implication; thus the notice requesting correction will necessarily be tailored to the mis-impression given. Since inferences drawn from an article may differ to some extent with each reader's subjective frame of reference, an adequate notice should inform the publisher which claimed implication of the article is allegedly libelous. Again, this requirement must be interpreted in a reasonable manner. (9b, 11b) In the instant case defendant's editorials purported to report as true a series of errant behavior by plaintiff's children causing a great deal of bother for local police. The editorials also stated that plaintiff's work kept her away from home a good deal of the time. Plaintiff's notice asked for correction of statement[s] concerning Mrs. Kapellas' qualifications for the City Council and her suitability as a mother. Because the editorial contained no explicit basis for these conclusions, the defendant could reasonably infer that the plaintiff believed that the statements that were published about her and her children implied that she was an unsuitable mother and unqualified for city office. Viewing the editorial not so much by its effect when subjected to the critical analysis of a mind trained in the law, but by the natural probable effect upon the mind of the average reader ( MacLeod v. Tribune Publishing Co., supra, 52 Cal.2d 536, 547, quoting Bates v. Campbell (1931) 213 Cal. 438, 442 [2 P.2d 383]), we find that the article in question is reasonably susceptible to such an interpretation. [14] Under the circumstances Mrs. Kapellas could reasonably ask for a correction of the editorial's implications rather than for a retraction or rectification of any individual statement; we therefore conclude that the notice adequately satisfied the requirements of section 48a. Nothing in the complaint or demurrer indicates that defendant encountered any difficulty in interpreting the notice. Under the facts as alleged defendant received the letter from plaintiff's attorney early in the statutory 20-day period but neither sought clarification nor so much as informed plaintiff or her counsel of the presently claimed ambiguity of the request. [15] Under these circumstances, [w]e cannot believe that defendant was so unaware of the significance of what it printed that it did not realize what ... plaintiff objected to and wished corrected. ( MacLeod v. Tribune Publishing Co., supra, 52 Cal.2d at p. 554.)