Court Opinion

ID: 9633565
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:52:35.697843+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:54:47.664214
License: Public Domain

AREND, Justice
(dissenting in part).
While I concur in the ultimate decision of the majority that the judgment must be reversed, I dissent from that portion of the opinion which holds that only the words “permanently fired,” contained in the News-Miner article of May 6, 1957, should have been given to the jury for their determination as to whether or not the article was a fair and substantially accurate abridgment of the Raaum report.
In his amended complaint, the appellee Francisco alleged that the entire article, together with its title, “was false and untrue and defamatory and did constitute libel per se and did upon its face impute to the plaintiff [Francisco] conduct in contravention of his responsibilities and duties as a fireman employed by the City of Fairbanks, Alaska.” In marked contrast to the piecemeal consideration given to these charges in the majority opinion, the defendant newspaper answered the complaint by denying the charges conjointly and alleging affirmatively that “the publication of May 6, 1957 * * * is a substantially accurate summarization and epitomization of the contents of the report filed by the chief of the Fairbanks Fire Department with the City Manager of Fairbanks.”
As I read section 611 of Restatement, Torts, which we are adopting as a rule of law in this case, the newspaper article must be considered in its entirety on the question of whether or not it satisfies the occasion of privilege. I see no reasonable basis for dismembering the article and telling the jury that they may consider only selected portions thereof on the -issue of conditional privilege. Such a tactic has the effect of producing a slanted picture for the jury and it could be just as detrimental to the *800cause of the defendant as to that of the plaintiff.
For the foregoing reasons, I conclude that on a retrial of this case the trial judge should first determine whether the News-Miner article, not just some selected portion thereof, was capable of a defamatory meaning. If he finds that it was, then he should submit to the jury the question of whether the article was or was not a fair and substantially accurate abridgment of the report.1

. See Jones v. Pulitzer Pub. Co., 240 Mo. 200, 144 S.W. 441, 445 (1912); Lawyers Co-Operative Pub. Co. v. West Pub. Co., 32 App.Div. 585, 52 N.Y.S. 1120 (1898). Cf. also Atlas Sewing Centers, Inc. v. National Ass’n of Independent Sewing Machine Dealers, 260 P.2d 803, 808 (10th Cir. 1958); Bennett v. Seimiller, 175 Kan. 764, 267 P.2d 926, 929 (1954); Lancour v. Herald & Globe Ass’n, 111 Vt. 371, 17 A.2d 253, 257-258, 132 A.L.R. 486 (1941).