Court Opinion

ID: 3317023
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-05 17:34:32.585387+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:39:01.072766
License: Public Domain

I dissent because the charge of the court on the subject of damages appears to me to be correct. The court said, inter alia: "Under our law it is not the purpose of this action, that is, an action of libel and slander, to punish the defendant for his offense, but to compensate the plaintiff for his injuries. . . . *Page 247 
If you come to the question of damages, you will give the plaintiff such damages as in your opinion will fairly compensate him for the injury done to his reputation by reason of the defamatory words." Then, after correctly pointing out the considerations which might influence the jury in estimating general compensatory damages, and repeating the rule that "if the jury finds that the statements were false as claimed by the plaintiff, the plaintiff is entitled to such damages as would be a compensation for the injury sustained as the natural or probable consequences of the slander or libel," the court charged the jury upon the relation of actual malice to compensatory damages as follows: "Where the words uttered or published are in themselves actually libelous or slanderous, the mental suffering occasioned by the publication of the defamatory words may be taken into consideration by the jury for the purpose of estimating general and compensatory damages. And it has been held that because a libel or slander involves an injury to the feelings of the plaintiff as well as to his reputation, his injury may be greater if the defamatory words are uttered with express malice than if there is only the malice which the law implies from intentionally doing . . . that which in its natural tendency is injurious."
It was after thus correctly instructing the jury on the subject of general compensatory damages, that the court told the jury that the damages "being almost entirely within your judgment, may range anywhere from merely nominal to what is sometimes called exemplary or vindictive damages, according to the degree of malice," and then properly instructed them that "damages beyond the actual compensation for the injury" were to be limited to the expenses of litigation, less taxable costs.
When the above quoted portions of the charge are *Page 248 
added to the collection of excerpts contained in the opinion, it seems to me that no logical basis is left for the conclusion that the court did not surround its charge upon the subject of damages with proper and sufficient limitations.
In this opinion PRENTICE, C. J., concurred.