Privileged Back Talk

The first State Supreme Court decision in U. S. history on a novel principle of libel law was studied last week by editors of the Scripps League of Newspapers in a report prepared by the League's general counsel, Samuel Simpson Hahn of Los Angeles.

On Nov. 21, 1933 one W. Frank Akin, a Portland, Ore. public accountant, was found shot dead in his apartment. Two days later one Mark M. Israel, a Portland jeweler and loan broker who had employed Akin to audit his accounts, gave police and a Portland Oregonlan reporter a sensational clue which he said Akin had confided to him. His story was that Akin had had a mistress who had frequently threatened to kill him.

When Editor Tom Shea of Scripps' Portland News-Telegram saw this story splashed on the Oregonian's front page, he promptly assigned a reporter to interview the murdered man's widow. Mrs. Akin hotly denied the tale, declared that her husband would never have confided in Israel because he knew Israel was a thief and hated him. When he read that statement in the News-Telegram, Jeweler Israel sued the paper for libel, asking $100,000 damages.

Not truth but privilege was the News-Telegram's defense. Its counsel argued that a citizen attacked in one newspaper should be legally privileged to retort through another newspaper with a defense which might include a counterattack on the attacker. That seemed fair enough to the jury but the trial judge, who said he had never heard of such a defense, set the verdict aside. The News-Telegram carried an appeal to the Oregon Supreme Court, last month got a unanimous verdict in its favor.

Mightily pleased with the precedent thus established, Counsel Hahn nonetheless cautioned Scripps editors "that in order to avail one's self of the right of SELF DEFENSE in libel, the person rebutting an assailant should bear in mind that his retort MUST BE A NECESSARY PART OF HIS DEFENSE, FAIRLY ARISING OUT OF THE CHARGES HE IS ANSWERING. In other words common sense governs the situation. For instance, if an assailant were to throw a small book at you, you would not be legally justified in firing a gun in self defense of your person. . . . So it is with the right to defend your reputation."

A newspaper which lost an extraordinary libel case last week was the Memphis Commercial Appeal, which by mistake had omitted "Ga." in the Savannah, Ga. date line on a crime story involving one Mrs. J. C. Johnson. Claiming that her friends who read the story thought she was the accused woman, a Mrs. J. C. Johnson of Savannah, Tenn. (pop. 1,129) sued for libel, last week was awarded $1,000.

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