Crane v. New York World Telegram Corp.

126 N.E.2d 753 (1955)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

D printed an article that said P was under indictment and that his lawyers were launching a defamation suit. This was completely and totally false. P sued D for libel. P asked for damages of $100,000. D tried to quibble its way out of the charges. D asserts that P was 'under indictment' in an alleged nonlegal sense of that term; more specifically, it recites that he had been accused of various crimes by private individuals and was, in fact, guilty of those crimes. The court at Special Term granted P's motion to strike D's defenses as insufficient in law. The Appellate Division took a different view; it reversed, holding that 'indictment' is reasonably susceptible to both the meaning 'of an accusation by a grand jury, and of an accusation generally,' and that it was for a jury to say in what sense it would be understood by the reader. The appeal is here by permission of the Appellate Division on certified questions.