Court Opinion

ID: 9830425
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:12:08.715011+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:22.091808
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
In his motion for rehearing plaintiff asserts that some of the statements in the original opinion were unfair and prejudicial to plaintiff. We believe that in his zeal counsel for plaintiff has misin*254terpreted those statements, but, realizing the gravity of the case and its implications, and in order to obviate any possible charge of unfairness, we will set out the testimony of plaintiff himself on the points stressed in his brief, so that the reader may draw his own inferences of fact.
It is first contended that the statement •in the original opinion concerning the alleged libelous reference to plaintiff as a “fair concessionaire,” was unfair. We •quote from plaintiff’s own testimony on the point:
“Q. Now, Dr. Chandler, I want you to tell me something about this incident that happened at Connersville, Indiana. Who was Calvin Howard? A. Calvin Howard was a boy that lived at Frio, Texas. He and I had hunted together. They are mountaineers and ranchmen.
“Q. He and his brother? A. He and his brother, Seth.
“Q. I believe you had at that time a :strange animal — -a sort of freak or monstrosity — which those boys had on exhibition at Connersville (Indiana), is that correct? A. Yes, sir.
“Q. That was part of an exhibit they had there? A. Yes, sir.
“Q. Did you have any interest in that exhibit? A. I owned the animal.
“Q. Well, will you please tell the court and jury how it happened that those boys had that exhibit there. Make it brief. I, believe .you took the animal to Chicago with you, did you not? A. Yes, I went straight from here to Chicago. I had seen in the paper where some men had ridden bulls from Texas and other things, had gotten publicity for their cities, and this being.such an odd animal, I took it along as a patriotic idea, and thought probably I could get some publicity for Corpus Christi, and I did. * * *
. “A. After I had gotten so much publicity and people had come to our house trailer to see the animal, among those were one of the Miller Brothers, with the 101 Ranch Shows, and they were on the fair grounds in Chicago, and they wanted me to put the animal in or go with them when they left there. In other words, they were going to put in side shows, and I couldn’t go with them, and I thought of these boys, whom I had always wanted to help, and they had expressed themselves as wanting to see some of the world, and I wrote them a letter and asked them if they would come and take charge of the show, and they did. But meanwhile, between the time they, got my letter, while they were on the road, which took them five days, Miller Brothers had gone broke, that is, they had closed them out at the grounds, and that was ‘blowed up’ you might say. Then I felt obligated, and I then bought the tent and had signs painted and cages made and everything to put these boys in business. They wanted to go on with it, with the showing of it.
“Q. Did you go in partners with them, or were you going to get your money back? A. No, here was my proposition to Boss Howard: I had something like $150.00 invested in the equipment. My animal had cost me $100.00, but I didn’t ask for • any of that, and they were to have paid me fifty per cent of their receipt until they had reimbursed me for this equipment.
“Q. That is, the tent and so on that you bought for them? A. Yes.
“Q. And beyond that, what interest did you have, in the profits after that? A. Oh, I didn’t intend, and they knew that I wasn’t to have gotten anything.
“Q. You were to get your money back? A. Yes, sir.
“Q. Now, tell us what happened on the fair grounds when you yere visiting them in Connersville. A. Well, I think I had better explain further, when it came time to open, they were a little afraid to go out, they had never dealt with such things, and we had planned to visit a doctor friend in Cincinnati, my wife and I and children, and the fair was on there, so we went down there together, and I helped them get started there, and the doctor and his wife were not at home, so we agreed to go on one or two other stops with them, and I did. * * *
“Q. • Well, now, how many fairs was he exhibited in to the public ? A. In three.
“Q. What were those? Name those fairs. A. Once at the fair grounds at Cincinnati, three days, and I think it was two or maybe three days at Batesville, I think it was Batesville, Ohio, and' the third was at Connersville, Indiana. I think it was three days there.
“Q. He was also exhibited at the World’s Fair or the Century of Progress, in Chicago, was he not? A. No, sir, I showed him, without charge, to the Boy Scouts of America up there. It was the only place he was ever showed.
*255“Q. You had private showings of him to scientists and zoo people, I believe you said? A. Oh, they would come to w|iere we lived and look at him, yes.
“Q. You had the animal with you? A. Yes.
“Q. Now, who made the arrangements for its exhibition in the three fairs that you have spoken of? A. I made the arrangements for him.
“Q. With the managers of those fairs?. A, Yes. * * *
“Q. Now, you arranged for the purchase and construction of the cage? A. Of the—
“Q. Of the cage in which he was kept in your exhibit? A. Yes, I had it built.
“Q. And the tent? A. Yes, I bought the tent for them.
“Q. Doctor, a lecture would accompany his exhibition, from time to time ? * * * Did you deliver that lecture? A. Sometimes, when men would call, like from zoos, and I did several times to relieve the boys, they wanted to get off. * * *
“Q. Now, Doctor, during the time that this animal was exhibited at those various fairs you lived there on the fair grounds in your trailer? A. Yes.
“Q. And these other two young men slept there in the concession? A. They slept in the tent.”
And plaintiff complains of the version, given in the original opinion, of the deplorable circumstance of the accidental killing, by shooting, of a young man in the show tent at Connersville, Indiana. We quote from plaintiff’s own testimony upon that point:
“The third stop was at Connersville, and I was on the grounds and about the tent, and there was a drunk man came in, very nice sort of chap, but gloriously drunk, and he had bothered them quite a lot and they came to me about it, and I took him out and he was very nice about it; and in the meanwhile he came back, and that continued several times.
“Q. What did he do? A. Just interested, just wanted to be in there. And he discovered a little sawed-off shotgun that was lying under the table that these animals were on, and a cloth was around that table, and there was a little fence around it for the man who lectured to keep the people hack. The wind was blowing this cloth and he saw this little sawed-off shotgun, and he asked to see it, and I pushed him back and told him he couldn’t see it, and that continued for a little bit, and finally he was trying to get this gun from the other side of the cage, and a lady called my attention to it, and I went around and asked him to go out agkin, and I came back to the same side that I was on of the cage, and in a little bit he was trying to get the gun again, and I just remarked that I’d better unload the gun before the drunk got hold of it and kill somebody or injure somebody. I stooped down under the table to get the gun, and as I came up with it, I was unhreaching it and this man grabbed me from over my back, and just pulled me back in this position (illustrating), and the gun fired at that time, and I don’t think it possible for my finger to have been on the trigger, for I was unbreaching it with my thumb, and when the gun fired it went off diagonally through the corner of the tent, and Calvin Howard, or Boss Howard was his nickname, was standing there at the ticket box and he received the charge in the back. * * * He died the next day. * * *
“Q. Where was that gun kept, did you say?' A. It was lying under the cage under the table that the cages were on.
“Q. It was your gun, wasn’t it? A. Yes.
“Q. Was it, had the barrel been sawed off when you bought it, or did you saw it off, Doctor? A. No, it was a gun my fath.er gave me. He sawed it off so he could carry it in his car- — just a common shotgun, with the barrel sawed off.”
Plaintiff points out that in one place in the original opinion it was stated that the burglary indictment was returned “in May, 1932,” whereas, the true date was in November, 1933. The error has been corrected in the original opinion.
We conclude that the matters disposed of in the original disposition were correctly decided. Plaintiff again urges some of his cross-propositions, particularly with reference to the admission of certain testimony over his objections. Fragments of that testimony were, apparently, inadmissible, while other parts were properly admitted, but this is no place, nor is it our function, to dissect the whole and segregate the good from the bad.
Defendants have also filed a vigorous motion for rehearing, resisting, chiefly, the holding of this court that the confessions of plaintiff’s alleged co-actors were not *256privileged, under the facts of the case, within the contemplation of the provision in Art. 5432, Vernon’s Ann. Civ. St., that a matter shall be deemed privileged if “1. A fair, true and impartial account of the proceedings in a court of justice * * * or any other official proceedings authorized by law in the administration of the law. * * * ”
We are not unmindful of the forceful argument and reasoning of defendants upon this point, but are not disposed to recede from that holding.
Nor are we disposed to recede from the holding that the mere silence of plaintiff, and his failure to publicly deny the charges and implications of the alleged libelous statement, may not be shown, either in justification of the publication, or in mitigation of the damages resulting therefrom. We are not willing to say that a person subjected in the newspapers to charges of misdeeds forfeits a single right or privilege by refraining from provoking a public controversy over the matter, outside the courts of the land.
Plaintiffs and defendants’ motions for rehearing will be overruled.