Court Opinion

ID: 9456379
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:50:48.348224+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:57.142845
License: Public Domain

NICHOLS, Judge
(concurring in part, dissenting in part):
It is important to note that Civil Action No. 1671-65 .is distinct from the other cases in this appeal. Though consolidated with the others for trial, the jury made a separate award of $1,000 therein. I concur in the court’s disposition of that case.
Nos. 1669-65 and 2554-65 are one lawsuit; No. 2554-65 was brought in Virginia because defendant Metzger could only be served there, and later it was transferred here. The same complaint serves for both and the verdict in both finds for Metzger but awards $4,-000 against defendants Porson and Gal-van. I would reverse in that case.
The complaint in 1669-65 and 2554-65 sets forth as libelous the letters identified as plaintiff’s exhibits 7 and 8. If they are not actionable libels, that action must fail. Both refer to appellee Poji-daeff’s letter, plaintiff’s exhibit 9, and it is necessary to refer to exhibit 9 to understand them. In exhibit 9 (a circular), Mr. Pojidaeff wrote that he was not representing any commercial organization or acting as private “entrepreneur” but was writing on behalf of his colleagues, the professional international conference interpreters of the Western Hemisphere. (They are, as I understand, the persons who deliver simultaneous translations of speeches, which those who do not understand the speaker’s language can pick up through headphones.) He said their rates were those of the International Association, that the members were well-known to the United Nations, the Department of State, and other named international organizations, and that they had experience in a variety of technical fields. He enclosed a list of conferences which used his services “as chief interpreter to organize their interpretation services.” He wanted to be told the plans (of future conferences) because the international conference interpreters had to be engaged well in advance. In a P.S. he said that if the addressees wanted further information “about myself” they could contact two named officials, of the United Nations and State Department, respectively.
Mr. Pojidaeff was President of an American association of interpreters and Vice-President of an international organization, in the same field, having headquarters in Paris.
Exhibit 7 is addressed to the Paris organization. It asserts that exhibit 9 constitutes an unethical direct mail solicitation to secure personal employment. Exhibit 8 says that no one is authorized to solicit employment on behalf of members of the organization in whose name exhibit 8 was sent. Both exhibits further take issue with Mr. Pojidaeff’s *296statements about rates, asserting that the rates he said were the same actually varied on the order of two to one. The key words “factually wrong and professionally unethical” occur in exhibit 7, not 8.
I suggest that it is difficult to libel a person in the course of commenting not on him but on something he has written, without purporting to derive derogatory information from any other source. A reader of exhibit 7 who did not have exhibit 9 before him would not know what exhibit 7 was all about. If he did, he would see that the alleged direct mail publicity campaign was, solely and simply, exhibit 9. Exhibit 7 really says that exhibit 9 shows the writer of exhibit 9 to have acted unethically in circulating exhibit 9. The reader of exhibit 7 could look at exhibit 9 and form his own conclusion. He could easily reach defendant’s conclusion. As I read Sullivan v. Meyer, 78 U.S.App.D.C. 367, 141 F.2d 21 (D.C.Cir.1944), cert. denied, 322 U.S. 743, 64 S.Ct. 1145, 88 L.Ed. 1575 (1944), a directed verdict would have been proper.
All that there is besides, of libel, is the denial in exhibits 7 and 8 of Mr. Po-jidaeff’s allegations in exhibit 9 as to rate structure for conference coverage. It is clear that the allegations of unethical behavior, in context, refer to the solicitation of business, not the rates. Nothing appeared to show it was infamous of Mr. Pojidaeff to charge whatever the traffic would bear. I do not think a denial of a person’s fact statement is libelous merely because adverse conclusions as to the person’s veracity might be drawn if the denial was believed. To say a statement is “factually wrong” does not charge its maker with being a deliberate liar, which is of course libelous.
Thus I do not see any libel to put before the jury in Nos. 1669-65 and 2554-65. I think the jury was allowed to take sides in what was essentially a business quarrel in which the law should not have intervened. My respectful dissent should not be construed, however, as challenging the result in No. 1671-65, in which the alleged libels were different.