Court Opinion

ID: 9683910
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:40:06.034872+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:51.242877
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Garwood,
joined by Justices Smedley and Hart, concurring.
While concurring in the result of the majority opinion, I am reluctant to subscribe to certain important statements of law therein, which seem likely to cause difficulty in future cases. The statement to which I principally refer reads: “The liberal rule relating to the privilege of newspapers to a reasonable and fair comment of the official acts of public officials does not apply to the publication of an article not true which would subject a public official to removal from office.” I fear that this statement confuses two distinct' matters: (a) the character of the publication or charge as libelous per se, that is, actionable without proof by the plaintiff of actual malice of the defendant or proof of special damage to the plaintiff; and (b) the matter of privilege, which is a defense and comes into play only when it is determined that the publication is otherwise actionable. The fact that the publication charges an officer with an offense of the type indicated is indeed pertinent to (a) but not at all pertinent to (b). Publications made about public officials are treated differently than publications about private individuals in that even a rather vigorous and untrue condemnation of a public official as an official is not libelous per se unless it charges him with an offense for which he may be removed from office, whereas the same condemnation of a private individual might well be libelous per se. The point has a parallel in the law of slander, in which a general accusation of unchastity is actionable per se if the victim is a woman but otherwise if the victim is a man. This question is not one of the privilege of the writer or speaker, but of whether the words written or spoken are in law actionable even though there be no privilege. The privilege of “fair comment”, or any privilege, for that matter, presupposes that the defamatory words are actionable of themselves and without need of the plaintiff to do more to make a case than to prove that they were published concerning him. Thus, if an official is said to be, for example, “an arrogant *100despicable character that should not be allowed to hold office”, the question of “fair comment” privilege probably does not arise, because no sufficient cause for removal from office is charged, though a similar publication regarding a person who is neither an official nor a candidate for public office might well justify recovery upon mere proof that it was made concerning the plaintiff, and the defendant would accordingly have to plead and prove his privilege or suffer judgment. On the other hand, cases are at least theoretically possible, in which the publication in effect charges something that would justify removal of the officer — victim from his office, yet, being in the nature of a comment, might be privileged as “fair comment”. In such a case the defendant, if he properly presented the matter of his privilege, would not be liable unless the plaintiff demonstrates in turn that the privilege was abused through actual malice or otherwise. But the defendant cannot establish this privilege unless the “fair comment” is indeed comment, as distinguished from a statement of fact. Bell Pub. Co. v. Garrett Engineering Co., 141 Texas 51, 170 S. W. 2d 197. See also Annotation in 110 A. L. R. 412. That is the critical issue in the present case, clearly presented in the very point on which the writ of error was granted by the words “same being a false statement of fact against plaintiff” and also much discussed on the oral argument. The statement that petitioner Fitz jar raid was said to have fired a pistol at the feet of a negro “just to scare him” was a statement of fact rather than a comment and therefore not privileged as “fair comment”, under the authorities mentioned. I consider the Bell Pub. Co. case as holding that a statement of facts does not become a “comment” of the publisher merely because the latter publishes it as coming from a third-party source. But the point of whether the fact thus published was or not ground for removal of petitioner as a public officer has nothing to do with whether the statement was actually a statement of fact or a comment or with the further question of whether the comment, if any, was “fair”.
The other proposition in the opinion that disturbs me is the broad statement, “* * * that malice cannot be inferred from the character of the language used, if privileged, without other evidence to prove it.” In the first place the point thus made is unrelated to our decision, since the jury has found there was no malice, and such finding is not questioned. Secondly, it may be doubted if the court’s proposition is sound in the broad form stated. Aside from “fair comment” cases, may there not be situations in which the occasion is conditionally privileged beyond doubt — such as an answer of an ex-employer of the plain*101tiff to an enquiry about the plaintiff from a prospective employer — but in which the false and defamatory statement itself is so out of proportion to or unrelated to the legitimate purposes of the communication as to indicate malice- or amount to an “abuse of privilege” — a broader term often used in lieu of malice? The question is an intricate one, and while the court’s proposition does find supporting language in some of the decisions cited, there seems no good reason to commit ourselves to it when our actual decision does not so require.
Opinion delivered February 22, 1950.
Motion for rehearing overruled April 19, 1950.