Court Opinion

ID: 9443505
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:23:32.071451+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:31.168807
License: Public Domain

*803RIVES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
There was publication, I think, in New York; and the evidence made a strong, if not compelling, case for the jury that there was also publication in Washington.
The fact that a corporation is an artificial entity, and therefore can act only through its agents, does not give it any added immunity for its torts. Corporate agents are just as much individual human beings as are the agents of natural persons. The same rules should apply to both. In Bander v. Metropolitan L. Ins. Co., 313 Mass. 337, 47 N.E.2d 595, 602, the court stated:
“We perceive no good reason why immunity from liability for defamation communicated by one agent to another should be accorded to an enterprise conducted in the corporate form and denied to an enterprise conducted by an individual or a partnership. The argument that a communication between agents of the same corporation is not a communication to a third person is not impressive in dealing with such a subject as defamation and would apply with almost equal force as between two agents of the same individual or partnership. * * * The defence of privilege is widely available in appropriate instances and, we think, furnishes as great protection as ought to be allowed.”
The keynote was sounded by Mr. Justice Bouldin of the Alabama Supreme Court as follows:
“But it is urged that where liability is sought to be fastened upon a principal, which must rest upon an act of the agent, done in the scope of his employment, the dictation of a letter by one agent to another, who transcribes it, must be considered one act, in so far as it affects the principal. We think this contention ignores the essential nature of the libel. In the case supposed, the agent who dictates the letter causes it to be written, and, so read, is for the moment the alter ego of the principal. The injury does not consist in the loss of esteem by an absent and may be corporate employer. The evil effect is in the loss of esteem by the stenographer in person, and not in any relation to the chief agent nor the common employer.” Berry v. City of New York Ins. Co., 210 Ala. 369, 98 So. 290, 292.
As said by the North Dakota Supreme Court in Rickbeil v. Grafton Deaconess Hospital, 74 N.D. 525, 23 N.W.2d 247, 255, 166 A.L.R. 99, 108:
“The personal rights of the individual to be free from defamation of character are paramount to any exigencies of business and the stenographer who types and the office-boy who copies are individuals with personalities even if mere employees, whether the relationship of master and servant exists or whether all parties concerned are employees of an employer common to each.”
In that case, the North Dakota Supreme Court reviewed the New York decisions, considering arguendo whether any such distinction existed in New York, and concluded that it did not.
The controlling case in New York, it seems to me, should be Ostrowe v. Lee, 256 N.Y. 36, 175 N.E. 505, where Judge Cardozo’s opinion settled beyond dispute that publication results from dictation, where the stenographic notes have been transcribed. That case involved a stenographer employed by an individual, but there is nothing in Judge Cardozo’s opinion to indicate that the rule would be different if the stenographer were employed by a corporation.
That ground of distinction was presented to two different lower court judges of the State of New York in October and November, 1938. One of them simply held that the New York cases earlier than Ostrowe v. Lee, supra, were still good law and that dictation to the secretary of a corporation did not amount to publication. Loewinthan v. Beth David Hospital, Sup., 9 N.Y.S.2d 367. The other held to the contrary and seems to me the better reasoned:
“It is argued, however, that Judge Cardozo’s opinion applies only to a case where an individual dictates to his *804stenographer, hut that the Wells Case [Wells v. Belstrat Hotel Corp., 212 App.Div. 366, 208 N.Y.S. 625] still applies where a corporate representative dictates to a corporate stenógrapher as in the present case. While it may be true that the corporate stenographer is part of the machinery of the corporation, and that the dictation and stenography are but links in the chain of the corporate business, still it cannot be gainsaid that the stenographer, whether for a corporation or an individual, has read the notes in order to transcribe them, and has thus become the required human agency which spells out publication. The evil is in the reading of the defamatory words by the stranger. It is only necessary that the stranger to the libel shall read and understand, and whether he or she is a corporate stenographer or the stenographer of a private individual, . in fairness and reason, should not be the deciding factor.” Bradley v. Conners, 169 Miss. 442, 7 N.Y.S.2d 294, 295.
An earlier federal case from New York, Nelson v. Whitten, D.C., 272 F. 135, 136, points up the reasoning for the rule which would apply equally to stenographers for corporations and to stenographers for partnerships or individuals.
“The reasoning is that a stenographer is an individual, just as any other employee; that there is no basis for the belief that a communication made to one occupying such a position would be less injurious to plaintiff than if it were made to any other of defendant’s employees, and that, as said by Lopes, L. J., in Pullman v. Hill, (1891) 1 Q.B. 524:
“ ‘It is said that business cannot be carried on if merchants may not employ their clerks to write letters for them in the ordinary course of business. I think the answer to this is very simple. I have never yet heard that it is in the usual course of a merchant’s business .to write letters containing defamatory statements. If a merchant has occasion to write such a letter, he must write it himself and make a copy of it himself, or he must take the consequences.’
“This argument is convincing and is adopted.”
As to the publication in Washington, the majority holds that Senator Sparkman was acting merely as, plaintiff’s representative, virtually his alter ego. It seems to me that a client may be libelled even to his own attorney. If plaintiff can prove, as he alleges, that the statements in defendant’s letter were false and malicious and made with intent to defame, then they were not responsive to Senator Sparkman’s request for “such information as you may care to give.” The question, I think, is more one of qualified privilege than of publication, and on the issue of qualified privilege the case comes within the rule announced by the Mississippi Supreme Court in Alabama & V. Ry. Co. v. Brooks, 69 Miss. 168, 13 So. 847:
“The publication was complete when the libelous letter was received and read by Messrs. Dabney & McCabe, the plaintiff’s attorneys. This necessarily follows from the establishment of the fact (settled by the verdict) that the defamatory statement was not covered by the privilege of the communication. The letter from the attorneys called for any lawful reply from the officers of the defendant, but it did not invite any malicious defamation of their client; and the defendant’s superintendent, by exceeding the privilege, deprived his principal of any defense it might have had if he had kept within it.” 13 So. 847, 849.
It seems clear to me, however, that the matter did not concern merely the plaintiff but was of great public interest and that Senator Sparkman was properly acting not as a representative of the plaintiff, but in his capacity as a Senator of the United States. He was giving the defendant an opportunity to offer an explanation before referring the matter to the Senate Elections Subcommittee. Certainly the jury could have found that Senator Sparkman was not the plaintiff’s alter ego. I therefore respectfully dissent.