Court Opinion

ID: 9550677
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:40:10.965513+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:08.129367
License: Public Domain

SCHAUER, J.
I concur generally in the views and conclusion reached by Mr. Justice Carter. The vice in section 48a which seems to me most lethal, as I endeavored to point out in my dissent in Werner v. Southern Cal. etc. Newspapers (1950), 35 Cal.2d 121, 150 et seq. [216 P.2d 825, 13 A.L.R.2d 252]1 is its licensing of two arbitrarily selected groups to maliciously engage in deliberately false libels.
The courts of last resort, both state and national, have unremittingly given staunch support to the constitutional freedoms of speech and press as against prior restraints. I am one who has been zealous to that end; but I had thought that the injustices which sometimes must flow from lack of prior restraints would be deterred, mitigated or compensated by subsequent responsibility, general and punitive, for abuses of the right. 2 Then in the Werner case, I found the state Legislature giving, and a majority of this court upholding, prior absolution to the selected groups of newspapers and radio broadcasters as against subsequent responsibility for either general or punitive damages and regardless of whether the libel or slander were inadvertent or knowingly and maliciously false.
*799Now I find the majority of the court extending their construction and effective application of the legislative act (Civ. Code, § 48a) to immunize the author of a slander or libel, whether inadvertent or deliberate, as well as the newspaper or broadcasting agency which gives circulation to the calumny.
An author, my prevailing associates hold, may deliberately and maliciously compose the vilest calumny, and if he can procure its publication in a newspaper or by a broadcasting company, by paid advertisement or otherwise, he can come within the encouraging arms of section 48a and repose securely immune from either general or punitive damages.
Does the spawning of such a doctrine bring pride to the free press of America? Or, perhaps, does the insistence of the newspapers and broadcasters on having something very akin to foolproof statutory immunity from liability in all libel-slander cases, just and unjust, rather than leaving to the courts their protection as against unfounded claims, stem in some measure from the very fact that a court of last resort which will sustain such a doctrine may be found ?

Whether the majority holding in Werner will stand on review by the United States Supreme Court has not as yet been determined. (Appeal to United States Supreme Court filed Aug. 25, 1950 [19 U.S. Law Week 3074]; probable jurisdiction noted Oct. 16, 1950 [19 U.S. Law Week, Nov. 14, 1950, Index, p. 20]; appeal dismissed on motion of counsel for appellant Jan. 2, 1951 [19 U.S. Law Week, Feb. 6, 1951, Supplement to Index, p. 11].)

California Constitution, article I, section 9: “Every citizen may freely speak, write, and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right. . . .”
Civil Code, section 3294: “[W]here the defendant has been guilty of . . . malice ... the plaintiff, in addition to the actual damages, may recover damages for the sake of example and by way of punishing the defendant.”