Court Opinion

ID: 9848853
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:28:44.804104+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:49.935460
License: Public Domain

RUSSELL, J.,
dissenting:
I disagree with both the plurality opinion and the concurring opinion. The language used by the defendants is intolerable by any civilized standard. Taxes, military service, and conformity to the law may be a high price to pay for life in an orderly society, but the compensating benefits of peace and public order are thought by most citizens to be worth the price. Internal peace and public order, indeed, are the principal benefits the State has to *239offer us in exchange for its numerous constraints on our freedom to do and say precisely what we want.
The words spoken by the defendants were like physical blows. They were, in themselves, foul-mouthed violence tantamount to an assault. No free man or woman should be expected to endure them without redress. Language of this kind, even in a relatively permissive age, may be expected to incite prompt retaliation. Such words are true “fighting words” because of their propensity to provoke an immediate breach of the peace, which is no trivial matter in light of the tendency of many of our citizens to keep and bear arms.
Although the victim of such a verbal assault may be justifiably outraged, our laws do not permit him to respond with physical violence. We tell the outraged victim that mere words, however grievous, will not justify a physical attack, Roark v. Commonwealth, 182 Va. 244, 252, 28 S.E.2d 693, 696 (1944), and that duels have been unlawful for well over two hundred years, see Lambert’s Case, 36. Va. (9 Leigh) 603, 605 (1838). Instead, we tell the outraged victim to go to law. We tell him that the insulting words statute, Code § 8.01-45,6 is the remedy provided by our social compact, and that in lieu of any right of self-help which he might have enjoyed in a primitive society, the civilized State in which he lives will permit him to recover such compensatory and punitive damages as a jury of his peers may think the outrage worth.
Without suggesting an alternative, the Court today destroys that remedy. The plurality opinion, ignoring the most recent decision of the United States Supreme Court on the subject, takes the position that the remedy is preempted by federal law because the tort was committed in the course of a labor dispute. The concurring opinion, applying dicta in our former cases out of context, simply concludes that the insulting words statute does not mean what it plainly says.
In Letter Carriers v. Austin, 418 U.S. 264 (1974), a case arising in Virginia, a divided United States Supreme Court held that defamatory words uttered in the context of a labor dispute were protected by federal labor law in the absence of “New York Times malice.” The plurality opinion considers Letter Carriers to *240be controlling, makes no mention of later decisions, and gives no consideration to the overriding state interest in preserving internal peace and public order from the threat of violence ignited by true “fighting words.” The plurality merely concludes that the foul epithets shouted by the defendants here would not “support liability” because nobody would believe them to be true, and federal labor law had preempted the plaintiffs’ remedy in any event. That interpretation ignores a distinction between “fighting words” and defamatory words which the United States Supreme Court has recognized for over forty years.
In Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942), the Court held that the Constitution affords no protection to certain well-defined classes of speech, including the lewd and obscene and insulting or fighting words which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. Id. at 572-73. Chaplinsky involved an appeal from a conviction under a state law penalizing “offensive, derisive and annoying words.” The New Hampshire Supreme Court, however, had narrowed the application of the law to words which “have a direct tendency to cause acts of violence by the person to whom, individually, the remark is addressed.” Id. at 573. Accepting New Hampshire’s interpretation of its own law, a unanimous Supreme Court held that the control of verbal conduct likely to cause violence lies within the domain of state power. Id. at 573. Chaplinsky remains authoritative with regard to a state’s right to control true “fighting words.”
Two later cases are instructive with respect to the distinction between “fighting words” and words which are merely defamatory. In Gooding v. Wilson, 405 U.S. 518 (1972) and Lewis v. City of New Orleans, 415 U.S. 130 (1974), divided courts struck down, as vague and overbroad, state laws designed to penalize insulting words. In both cases, the majority took the position that there was danger that the laws might be employed to punish constitutionally protected speech because, and only because, the state courts had not adopted precise definitions of the statutory terms restricting their application to true “fighting words,” as New Hampshire had done in Chaplinsky. The message seems clear enough.
Farmer v. Carpenters, 430 U.S. 290 (1977), decided three years after Letter Carriers but not mentioned by the plurality, is controlling on the issue of federal preemption. There, a dissident *241worker recovered damages from a union for inflicting severe emotional distress by, among other things, subjecting him to “frequent public ridicule” and “incessant verbal abuse.” Id. at 293. The union contended that its verbal onslaughts were privileged because uttered in the course of a labor dispute and that the plaintiff’s state remedy was preempted by federal labor law. The state appellate court agreed with the union, taking the view that the plurality takes today. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed, refusing to apply the preemption doctrine to activity that touched “interests so deeply rooted in local feeling and responsibility that, in the absence of compelling congressional direction, we could not infer that Congress had deprived the States of the power to act.” 430 U.S. at 296-97 (quoting San Diego Bldg. Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U.S. 236, 243-44 (1959)). Justice Powell wrote, for the Court:
Nothing in the federal labor statutes protects or immunizes from state action violence or the threat of violence in a labor dispute . . . and thus there is no risk that state damages actions will fetter the exercise of rights protected by the NLRA. On the other hand, our cases consistently have recognized the historic state interest in “such traditionally local matters as public safety and order . . . .” And, as with the defamation actions preserved by Linn, state-court actions to redress injuries caused by violence or threats of violence are consistent with effective administration of the federal scheme: Such actions can be adjudicated without regard to the merits of the underlying labor controversy.
Id. at 299-300 (citations omitted).
Thus, if our insulting words statute is restricted in its operation to true “fighting words,” words having a tendency to provoke an immediate breach of the peace, as I think it is, its remedy is clearly not preempted by federal labor law.
The concurring opinion relies on dicta in a line of cases beginning with W. T. Grant Co. v. Owens, 149 Va. 906, 141 S.E. 860 (1928), to hold that the insulting words statute is assimilated to an action for libel or slander for all purposes, and that it thus affords no remedy for true “fighting words,” notwithstanding the express terms of the statute.
*242That view overlooks the profound difference between true “fighting words” and words which are merely defamatory. “Fighting words,” such as those used here, do not tend to injure the victim’s reputation, character, social standing, or means of earning a living. Rather than degrading the victim in the estimation of his peers, “fighting words” may arouse sympathy for him in bystanders who overhear the words and provoke them to join with him in a prompt and violent assault on the speaker. The State’s interest in controlling such words is the paramount one of preserving public peace and order in the community. By contrast, defamatory words are actionable because of the injury they do to the victim’s private reputation, and the State’s interest in them extends only to affording its citizens a just remedy for their private injuries.
We have said repeatedly, in the context of words merely defamatory in character, that an action under the insulting words statute is assimilated to a common-law action for libel and slander. But we have never made that statement in a true “fighting words” case, this being the first such case to come before us since we decided W. T. Grant in 1928. An analysis of the facts in all the cases based on the insulting words statute which have come before us since W. T. Grant makes clear that each of them, including all those relied on by the concurring opinion, involved words which were either defamatory per se or per quod; and, if published, would have formed a basis for a common-law action for libel or slander independent of the insulting words statute.7
*243It may fairly be argued that some of these cases involved words which, in addition to their tendency to defame, might also provoke a breach of the peace, depending on the surrounding circumstances. But it is beyond question that each of them involved words which had, or allegedly had, the effect of damaging the plaintiffs reputation, character, standing in the community, or ability to earn a living. For that reason, they would have been proper subjects for actions of libel or slander. Our statements that actions under the statute were assimilated to actions for defamation were, therefore, perfectly appropriate to the facts of the cases then before us. But to quote those statements in a case involving true “fighting words” is to quote them out of context. The reason is that true “fighting words” have no tendency to defame, but have only a tendency to anger.
As both the plurality opinion and the concurring opinion say, no one would ever believe the foul epithets used by the defendants in this case to be literally true. Regardless of the defendants’ intention, they convey no assertion of fact which a hearer would consider capable of proof or disproof. Thus, these words could not form a basis for an action for libel or slander. They are simply verbal assaults. Hence, to hold that a statutory action for such words is “assimilated” to an action for libel or slander is to ignore the historic distinction between the two purposes served by the statute8 and to deprive the victim injured by such verbal assaults of any remedy at all.
*244If there is an unfortunate lack of remedy for such words in Virginia, as the plurality opinion implies and the concurring opinion flatly states, the fault cannot be laid at the door of the General Assembly. That body has amended the statute several times since 1928. It expressly reenacted it as a part of the Code of 1950 (former § 8-630) and again reenacted it in the 1977 recodification which resulted in the adoption of Title 8.01. Each time, the legislature specified that the words made actionable are those which “tend to violence and breach of the peace.” If the statute is as hamstrung as the concurring opinion says, it is the interpretation expressed in that opinion which makes it so.
Although the remedy which the statute provides for defamatory words has been assimilated to an action for libel or slander, its remedy for true “fighting words” remains. The General Assembly has said so repeatedly, and we have never said otherwise. The effect of our insulting words statute, therefore, has been narrowed in precisely the same way as New Hampshire’s was in Chaplinsky.
I would hold that Code § 8.01-45 affords an independent cause of action to redress true “fighting words” which tend to provoke violence and breach of the peace, as distinguished from words merely defamatory, and that such actions are not assimilated to actions for libel or slander. I would further hold, because of the State’s legitimate interest in preserving internal peace and public order, that the remedy is not preempted by federal law. Because the plaintiff proved a case which clearly meets the foregoing requirements, I would affirm.
CARRICO, C.J., and STEPHENSON, J., join in dissent.

 § 8.01-45: “All words shall be actionable which from their usual construction and common acceptance are construed as insults and tend to violence and breach of the peace.”

 Since 1928 when this Court stated in W. T. Grant that an action for insulting words is completely assimilated to the common law action for libel and slander, 52 cases involving the insulting words statute have been decided. A careful search of those cases discloses that none dealt with true “fighting words,” but all dealt with defamatory words. For example, in the following cases, we have specifically stated that an action for insulting words is assimilated to a common-law action for slander or libel: id. (plaintiff accused of taking money from employer); Rosenberg v. Mason, 157 Va. 215, 160 S.E. 190 (1931) (plaintiff accused of taking money from employer); Guide Publishing Co. v. Futrell, 175 Va. 77, 7 S.E.2d 133 (1940) (statement that an unmarried woman was married and a mother); M. Rosenberg & Sons v. Craft, 182 Va. 512, 29 S.E.2d 375 (1944) (statement that plaintiff owed money, past due); Darnel v. Davis, 190 Va. 701, 58 S.E.2d 68 (1950) (plaintiff accused of trespass); Carwile v. Richmond Newspapers, Inc., 196 Va. 1, 82 S.E.2d 588 (1954) (plaintiff, an attorney, accused of unprofessional conduct); Weaver v. Finance Company, 200 Va. 572, 106 S.E.2d 620 (1959) (statement that the plaintiff was in default on a loan); Letter Carriers v. Austin, Et Al., 213 Va. 377, 192 S.E.2d 737 (1972) (plaintiff called a “scab,” accompanied by a highly uncomplimentary definition of that term, a classic in the labor movement, written by Jack London); Shupe v. Rose's Stores, 213 Va. 374. *243192 S.E.2d 766 (1972) (statement that plaintiffs checks would not be honored because her husband had disavowed her debts); and Tweedy v. J. C. Penney Co., 216 Va. 596, 221 S.E.2d 152 (1976) (plaintiff accused of attempted theft).

 The insulting words statute was first enacted in 1810 as a part of a comprehensive scheme to deter duelling. In 1849 it was amended to permit the defendant to interpose such defenses as privilege and truth. We observed in Chaffin v. Lynch, 83 Va. 106, 121, 1 S.E. 803, 812 (1887), that the legislature had evidently concluded that the statute was a failure as a deterrent to duels. When the same case came before us again in 1888, 84 Va. 884, 888, 6 S.E. 474, 476, we specifically held that the statute “applies to both classes of actions alike,” i.e. (1) actions for insults tending to a breach of the peace, and (2) actions for libel and slander. The reason for leaving it on the books, despite its failure as an anti-duelling measure, was that the first class of cases had not been actionable at common law, and the second class was made actionable by the statute without the common-law requirement of publication. It is clear that in our cases prior to 1928, the distinction between the two classes was clearly recognized. In Hines v. Gravins, 136 Va. 313, 320, 112 S.E.2d 869, 871 (1923) (citations omitted), we said:
When the history of the statute is recalled, and it is observed that its purpose was so to extend the common law as to give a right of action for insulting words, even *244though containing no imputation which was actionable at common law, the reason for the rule . . . seems to us apparent. The design of the statute is to prevent breaches of the peace ....
In Wright v. Cofield, 146 Va. 637, 640, 131 S.E. 787, 788 (1926), our last true “fighting words” case, we said that the purpose of the statue was “[t]o prevent the use of language by one toward another likely to bring about a personal encounter.”
The only other States having similar statutes appear to be West Virginia and Mississippi. In both, the distinction between “fighting words” and defamatory words is clearly recognized, and the respective statutes are made applicable to “fighting words” for the purpose of discouraging breaches of the peace, Mauck v. City of Martinsburg, 280 S.E.2d 216 (W. Va. 1981); Malone, Insult in Retaliation—The Huckabee Case, 11 Miss. L.J. 333 (1939). Neither state holds that the statutory action, in cases involving “fighting words,” has been assimilated to an action for defamation.