PECULIAR LIBEL ACTION.

Evening Star, Issue 7168, 23 March 1887, Page 1

PECULIAR LIBEL ACTION.

A SUBSTANTIAL CLAIM FOR DAMAGES. The hearing of the action Robinson v. the Evening Stab, in which L 50,000 damages are claimed for alleged libel, was concluded in the Supreme Court at a late hour last night, and resulted in a verdict for the defendants, Mr D. M. Stuart appeared for the plaintiff ; Mr Haggitt, with him Mr Hodgkins, for the defendant. The action was brought by the plaintiff, formerly oi Dunedin and now of Wellington, architect, against the defendants George Bell (proprietor), Gilbert Buchanan (printer), and John George Moody (publisher) of the Evening Star. The following evidence was given for the defence Edgar Hall Carew, R.M. at Dunedin, stated that on the Bth of November, 1883, he heard the case of Robinson v. White at the City Police Court. By referring to his notes of the case he found that the complainant in cross-examination gave the following evidence:—“l know none of the family. I say that I never insulted her, I know Miss White. I spoke to her in the street on Monday. She passed me. I spoke to her for the first time in my life, I cannot say who spoke first. (After being pressed). I spoke to her first. She was a stranger to me, I cannot remember what I said. I said : ‘ It is a dark road, and there is a tendency to run against each other.’ We walked on together to my office all the way from Kensington. I did not invite her to go np a hill. I said I was in a hurry. We both walked very fast into town. I said that I was going into town. She said ‘ I will allow you to walk up town with me.’ She said something about my name. I told her who and what I was. I did not ask her to go into the Cricket Ground, I did not catch her hand at any time. There was another interview. She came to me in the street afterwards. 1 spoke to her and asked if she had seen her friend. I asked her whether I might accompany her up the road again. I shook hands both times. She said ‘ Yes ; she met the friend.’ I shook hands just before this. I turned then. Ido not know the friend [referring to the defendant]. The first day he did not make a complaint. He wanted me to apologise for insulting his sister and speaking to her in the street. I promised to go on Saturday or Monday. He said if I did not apologise he would thrash me.” Fanny White, who was examined for the defence, was from sixteen to eighteen years of age, and seemed bashful and nervous. She evidently felt uncomfortable in the Court. Witness thought it very improbable she would address a strange man in the street. She snid in evidence: “On the 29th October, at night, I was going to the Athenamm. I know the accused now—never before that night. He spoke to me. He overtook me, spoke, and walked. He came up to me and I walked faster. He left me at the corner of the City Hotel. He spoke to me. He asked me where I was going, my name, where I lived, and age. He asked me to go np the hill. Afterwards lie asked me to go in the Cricket Ground. He met me again when I was coming home. He followed me and spoke to me at Cargill’s monument. He asked me to go down a back street with him. He took my hand, and I took it away. I told him he had no right to apeak to me; he was a stranger. I saw no one I knew till I passed the Cricket Ground. The accused left me, and I complained to my brother next day.” In giving judgment in the case witness gave a reason for inflicting a small penalty. The report in the Stab of what he said was substantially correct. Witness considered the report of the case a fair, correct, honest, and impartial one. Albert Cohen, reporter on the Evening Star, said that the report of the proceedings in the Police Court on November 8, 1883, was a fair and impartial report of what transpired on that occasion. It was a condensed report of his own notes. Sergeant-major Bevin gave evidence as to the correctness of the Star’s reports of the cases in which plaintiff was concerned. Frederick G. Whetham, reporter on the Star, stated that he wrote the report of the Christchurch Exhibition in which the plaintiff’s pictures were criticised. The criticism was quite fair, he considered, although the plaintiff’s handiwork was described as “ appalling.” It was the laughing-stock of the Exhibition. The pictures had been altered since the Exhibition. The figures who “ were in attitudes which no marionette troupe could approach ” had disappeared, along with the men who were leaning against a wall with their feet in a gutter. The footpath had also been reduced. He thought he was perfectly safe in saying no such buildings had ever existed in Dunedin. He had no ill-feeling against the whom he had not seen at that time.

Mr Haggitt in addressing the jury observed that the foundation of the case, as the plaintiff told them, was an alleged misreport of the proceedings in the Police on the Bth of November; and if the allegation that the report was a garbled account of the proceedings was disproved, the case should fail. In the box the plaintiff had_ sworn that the report was false, had insinuated that the girl was an abandoned character, and had stated that the evidence was that the girl had accosted him. The plaintiff’s evidence regarding the proceedings at the Police Court had been directly contradicted by the Resident Magistrate who heard the case, and who had produced his notes of the evidence. Mr Carew had also told them that the report contained an honest, fair, and impartial report of the proceedings that were held before him on that occasion. Such being the evidence regarding this report, it seemed to him that the plaintiff should be at once out of Court, and that nothing more need be said ; for it must be apparent that a man who would in, the box attempt to mislead the jury as the plaintiff had in one respect would attempt to mislead them with regard to everything else; that he was a man unworthy of credit; and that the jury could not rely upon him in any respect. The evidence before the jury disclosed that the plaintiff was a man who, when he found an unprotected girl, would presume upon her defenceless condition to offer her insults; and the evidence also showed that it was not always safe for a man of that character to insult a girl because for the time being she was unprotected, as happily there were in some cases brothers, friends, and relatives who were prepared to punish such cowardly insolence. The plaintiff in this case found that he had caught a Tartar in the person of tho girl’s brother, and the evidence showed that he had got the thrashing he so richly deserved, and that he was then such a fool as not to keep quiet about it, but must make known to the whole community, by proceedings at the Police Court, that he had insulted a girl and had been punished for the insult. Yet this man came before a jury to ask for L 50,000 damages on the ground that he had been insulted. During the course of the case it bad also been shown that the insult offered to Miss White was not an isolated instance of misconduct on the part of the plaintiff, bat it was shown that frequent complaints had been received from respectable people showing that it was the habit of the plaintiff to insult unprotected females. What profit could it possibly be to the Stab to disparage and degrade the plaintiff? He hardly knew what his learned friend conld think of the jury when he imagined ho could hoodwink them into believing such nonsense as that the Stab had attempted to degrade the plaintiff for its own profit. It was enough to make anyone laugh to think that the plaintiff considered himself of so much importance that the Stab should deliberately set to work to lower him |n the eyes of the public for the profit of its proprietor, or for any other purpose. The proposition was too ridiculous for comment, "as to the letters complained of, only those who knew tho plaintiff to be the blackguard the letters represented the person referred to in them

tiaui, h»’" i ß ht rem ; rl ; th “* lbcre w “ *,‘v“ -jVib word in that criticism which Si d 5&5? to the plaintiff, and the criticism, though humorous, was mild and quite justifiable. The extraordinary thing about them, however, was that they were brought before the jury in an altered condition, and this was accounted for by the plaintiff saying that the change must have been caused by the pictures lying in the damp. What could they think of a man who came there to complain of unfair criticism of a certain drawing, and produced that drawing to them in an entirely different condition from what it was in at the time it was criticised ? It was in keeping with the evidence of a man who came there and said that the reports of the evidence in the Court were garbled and strained, and entirely misrepresented, so as to put a different complexion on the evidence than it deserved. Pictures exhibited in public were open to criticism to any extent, so long as reference was only made to the picture. The whole question was this : Did the criticism in question exceed the bounds of fair criticism ? The plaintiff got into great notoriety, and he imagined the Star had a “ down ” on him, and were taking every possible opportunity to persecute him. It was not on such grounds as these that the plaintiff should come to a jury for damages. Persons who came into a Court and submitted to a jury that they they should have damages should have a better record than Mr Robinson. Mr Stuart said that the jury had heard a great deal about what a newspaper like the Star would not do. It was not a very remarkable production. It was not the first time the Star had been in Court for things of this kind, and would he in again. As to the criticism of the architectural drawings, they did not profess to be works of art. There might be some of tho Star’s customers who read the report in question and liked unsavory messes of this kind. Mr Haggitt’s statement as to papers not being responsible for letters from correspondents was not correct. It was no use saying the letters might fit many others. The subeditor admitted that ho knew to whom the letters referred, and he assisted some coward to stab a man in the dark. Insult was in every line. The man was accused of the most cowardly of crimes he could commit. It must be apparent from what the plaintiff had told them that he had been substantially injured by the publication of these letters. The Star had written this man out of Dunedin, and if it was not stopped would write him out of New Zealand, as the ‘ Daily Times ’ would write Mr H. S. Fish into the next Parliament, With regard to one of the letters, the Star denied that the plaintiff was referred to, and yet when he questioned the sub-editor he said he knew who tho letters referred to.

His Honor, in summing up, said the plaintiff sued the proprietor, printer, and publisher of the Evening Star newspaper in respect of five several libels. The first was in respect of what was alleged to be an unfair report of proceedings in the Police Court. The next three were three letters which appeared in that, paper, and the last was in respect of a criticism on the drawings which were exhibited by the plaintiff in the Christchurch Industrial Exhibition. There were, therefore, three classes of libels and different considerations applied to each class. Ho would deal with each class separately, He would take first the charge that defendants had published an unfair report of tho proceedings which took place in the Police Court. If the plaintiff’s story was true—if the account ho gave of what took place on the occasion was correct—then manifestly the report would have been an cxceeding’y unfair one. He stated that it contained a number of things that never were said, and that it contained an expression of opinion by the Magistrate which the Magistrate never uttered. They had, however, on the other side the evidence of .the Magistrate himself, Mr Garew. The plaintiff spoke from memory of what took place more than three years ago; the Magistrate had notes of what took place and referred to them. That being so, as the Magistrate’s notes were made at the time, the jury could have very little difficulty in coining to the conclusion that the account of what Mr Cavcw gave of what occurred was really the correct one. If that was so, it would be difficult to say that the report was, so far as the plaintiff was concerned, a substantially fair report of what took place. It was not a detailed report of all that took place. That was not necessary. Happily for the readers it was not tho practice for newspapers to report verbatim the evidence given by the parties in the Police Court cases. A summary of a case wasadl that was necessary to give t« the reading public, and if that was a fair summary of what took place no one had any right to complain. As had been said, courts of justice were open to the public, and anyone, whether he was a newspaper proprietor or otherwise, had a right to report the proceedings, and if ho did so fairly no action could lie against the person who vepoted thereon, although damage might be proved by tho facts being made public. If tho whole of the evidence had been set out, instead of the short summary, it seemed to him (the learned Judge) that it was quite possible that what had really occurred would have been more damaging to the plaintiff than the mere summary, because the detailed story given by Miss White would have appearel, and the public would have, seen from it that the Magistrate had ultimately believed that story. If the account given by Mr Carew was tho true one, as no doubt It was, it would be difficult to see how it could be said that the report was not substantially a fair summary of what took place, or that he could in any way bo said to have been injured by the report not having been given at length. The first question for the jury was: Was the report of these pro ceedings a fair and substantially correct summary of what took place ; and if it was, was tho plaintiff entitled to recover any damages in respect of such publication ? If it was really a garbled report and to his prejudice, then no doubt he was entitled to any compensation which the jury thought reasonable for such unfairness. They then came to the three letters. The first thing the jury would havo to be satisfied of was that the letters referred to the plaintiff, and were intended by their writers, or by the publisher of them, to refer to the plaintiff. If they were intended by the writers to refer to tho plaintiff, and did refer to him, then the publisher, printer, and proprietor of the paper were responsible, even though they themselves may have had no intention to so allude.. If the proprietor of a paper allows someone else to make use of his paper he renders himself responsible if the correspondence happens to -..i-p him in for a libel. The jury- had first to satisfy themselves that the letters referred to the plaintiff; and next were they libels, and intended to bring him into hatred, contempt, and ridicule. If .they were, the plaintiff would be entitled to damages. Hut in estimating tho damages they would be fully justified in taking into consideration all the circumstances of the case, and anything they had heard about the character of the plaintiff'. Tho last libel that came before them was that of the criticism. It was not open to him to bring an action against a newspaper simply because the critic chose to laugh at his picture. The question was not whether they or him•elf would criticise it in the same way ; nor was it whether the criticism was severe, or whether the criticism was.auimated by personal malice—that must appear sometimes within the four corners of a criticism. But ho had no hesitation in saying that if this article had stood by itself, and had not been put in as ono of the scries of libels, tho verdict should be for the defendants. In order to give any damages in respect of such a criticism, it must be shown not only that there was an attack on the work of the artist, but that there was really an attack on the artist himself. His Honor concluded by saying: I will recall your attention to the fact that there are three classes of libel—tho report, the letters, and the criticism. I havo endeavored to show yon the principles on which each shall toe dealt with. As far as the question of damages is concerned, if you think the plaintiff is entitled to recover, perhaps I need hardly remind you that you cannot give more than the sum that is claimed. In estimating the damages you have to consider the whole circumstances of the case. The jury retired at 5.40. At 6.45 they returned to ask a question of His Honor. The Foreman said: I desire to ask your Honor if you can take a verdict of twothirds. ; His Honor: It is three-fourths after three hours, but I cannot take a verdict of twothirds. -After you have retired for]three hours and have considered it, and then yon ■ay yon cannot agree unanimously, |I can t»ha a verdict of three-fourths. i The Foreman: That is all I have to {ask. - The jury; then- again retired, and'again

entered the Court shortly before nine o’clock, having agreed upon their verdict. The verdict was for the defendants. His Honor: Thank you, gentlemen. Judgment for the defendants. Costs as per scale, disbursements, and witnesses’ expenses. The jurors were then discharged until Thursday morning, His Honor remarking that he was sorry he could not discharge them from further attendance, but that he could not do so as there would not be a panel without them. The Court adjourned at 9 p.m, until 10 a.m. on Thursday.