Opinion ID: $opinion_id
Heading Depth: 1.0
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: $label

Text: The column on its face contains no clearly actionable statement. Although the questions "What happened to all the money last year? and every other year?" could be read to imply peculation, they could also be read, in context, merely to praise the present administration. The only persons mentioned by name are officials of the new regime; no reference is made to respondent, the three elected commissioners, or anyone else who had a part in the administration of the Area during respondent's tenure. Persons familiar with the controversy over the Area might well read it as complimenting the luck or skill of the new management in attracting increased patronage and producing a "tremendous difference in net cash results" despite less favorable snow; indeed, witnesses for petitioner testified that they so read the column.

Respondent offered extrinsic proofs to supply a defamatory meaning. These proofs were that the column greatly exaggerated any improvement under the new regime, and that a large part of the community understood it to say that the asserted improvements were not explicable by anything the new management had done. Rather, his witnesses testified, they read the column as imputing mismanagement and peculation during respondent's tenure. Respondent urged two theories to support a recovery based on that imputation.