Brandreth v. Lance

8 Paige Ch. 24 (1839)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

P was the proprietor and vendor of 'Brandreth's Vegetable Universal Pills.' P claimed the product's general efficacy in the cure of diseases. At one time P had employed Lance (D) but had been obliged to discharge him for improper conduct. Lance (D) became enraged, and vowed revenge, and threatened to destroy P. Lance (D) opened a rival establishment for the purpose of vending medicine or pills in the city of New York. P had spoken to Trust (D) who offered not to write about P's life for a bonus of $50. Lance (D) had already applied to Trust (D) to write the book about P. P refused the offer. Previous to the filing of the bill, P received a printed sheet, enclosed to him in a letter, containing the title page and preface and two other pages of a work all filled with salacious allegations. The table of contents represented P as being filius nullius, or rather as being filius populi, the child of many fathers, and as having passed through the various and successive grades of sailor, confectioner, painter, brass founder, peddler, jeweler, bagman to a pill vendor, money broker, author, poet, and dramatist, until he had risen to the rank of a wholesale manufacturer of that rare medicine upon which the smiles of fortune had been so freely bestowed. P alleged that the printed sheet set out in the bill, was a false, malicious, and highly injurious libel although in the title page the person whose life it purported to be was called Benjamin Brandling instead of Brandreth. P prayed for a perpetual injunction restraining Ds from printing or publishing such book or pamphlet. Ds demurred to P’s bill.