Court Opinion

ID: 9733757
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 17:16:37.68073+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:44.014136
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(specially concurring).
This appeal is not a case deciding whether Janklow is right or wrong or the publisher, author, or book sellers are right or wrong; or whether Janklow was or was not libeled; it is only to decide, in law, if his complaint states a cause of action for libel. In different vernacular, the question is: Did Janklow’s attorneys fail to plead what we lawyers term a cause of action for libel?
Reviewing the ten-page complaint of the pleader, it appears to me that a cause of action for libel is pleaded. Therefore, I join the reversal.
This case has not even reached the summary judgment stage. Discovery has not progressed to any great extent, although there has been some discovery. Considering that the prayer for damages is $4,000,000 in compensatory damages plus five times the amount of these damages in punitive damages, a paucity of facts have been developed. Thus, the copious argument of facts advanced by all of the parties is based more on stratagem than a basic mooring of proof. “A motion to dismiss ... tests the law of a plaintiff’s claim and not the facts which support it.” Hunt v. Hunt, 309 N.W.2d 818, 820 (S.D.1981).