Court Opinion

ID: 9444429
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:00:52.533963+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:52.220974
License: Public Domain

POPE, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I am frank to say that I find nothing in the verdict which required a judgment for the defendant. The questions framed by the court for answer by the jury were designed to ascertain whether the words in the newspaper were spoken of a very large, all-inclusive group of persons, or whether, as Judge YANKWICH puts it, it referred to a group “small enough so that a person reading the article may readily identify the person as one of the group.” Question 1 described a limited group, which the jury, by their answer to Question 2, said numbered from 5 to 10. The jury said the reference was to this smaller group. The questions 3, 5 and 7 simply described larger, and generally all-inclusive groups. Thus No. 3 referred to “all air carriers * * * that did not have a certificate of convenience”. No. 5 referred to “all air carriers * * * that did not have a certificate” and also those with certificates when the latter were making non-scheduled flights. No. 7 referred to “all non-scheduled air carriers”. The jury simply answered that the group was not any of these large, or all-inclusive groups described in 3, 5 or 7. I think this may be made plain if we consider that, in substance, question 1 referred to what, for convenience, we may call “large non-scheduled air carriers”, while question 7 referred to “nonscheduled air carriers, both large and small.” The jury has said no more than that the article referred to all of the large ones, but it did not refer to every such carrier, both large and small. Even if some inconsistency could be found between the answers to No. 1 and No. 7, the only result would be to require a new trial. Mounger v. Wells, 5 Cir., 30 F.2d 521. But in my view there is no such inconsistency. Much less can the answer to No. 7 be construed to be a finding that the article did not refer to the plaintiff. To make it do that it would be necessary to change the question to read: “Did the editorial refer to any non-scheduled air carrier?”
Notwithstanding my disagreement on this point, I concur in what is said respecting the lack of proof as to how the article might be understood, and also that the publication was not actionable because it was within the rules of fair comment.
At the argument counsel for appellant said, in answer to inquiries as to whether the article might not be fair comment,, that such defense would not be available because here was a charge of a want of financial responsibility, that this was a statement of fact, not of opinion, and that fair comment cannot cover false statements of fact, citing Washington. Times Co. v. Bonner, 66 App.D.C. 280, 86 F.2d 836, 842, 110 A.L.R. 393. It is true that there, in laying down the-law for the District of Columbia,1 the-court rejected the rule laid down in the-leading case of Coleman v. MacLennan,. 78 Kan. 711, 98 P. 281, 20 L.R.A.,N.S., 361, that the right of fair comment extends, in the absence of malice, to misstatements of fact.2 But as Judge Yankwich says, the later, and I think the better considered authorities, disagree *631with the District of Columbia court. Thus in Snively v. Record Pub. Co., 185 Cal. 565, 198 P. 1, the California court, reversing its previous stand, expressly approved the Coleman v. MacLennan rule. I agree that even if we were to find that the article here did contain a statement of fact, yet we should hold that the rule to be applied in Alaska requires that the publication be regarded as fair comment.

. The court spoke of it as “the rule in the Federal courts”. That was in 1936, before Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 1938, 304 U.S. 64, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188.

. It referred to that as the rule of “a few states”, and asserted that “the great weight of authority” was to the contrary. According to Mr. Prosser (Prosser on Torts, p. 840), the authorities are rather-evenly divided.