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NOTES OF RECENT CASES
the contract requiring the printing of a certain number of copies of each report and the delivery of the stereotype plates to the state after these copies were printed. The publishing company, however, secretly and clandestinely printed a large number of extra copies which it sold on its own account, realizing a large profit therefrom, and the state sued to enjoin the defendant from selling any such copies and to require it to de liver to the proper officer of the state all copies so unlawfully printed and for an accounting of the profits. All of these various forms of relief were denied, and the court held that the unauthor ized use of the literary production of another furnishes no ground for recovering damages except through the Federal Copyright Laws. The only relief which the state can hope to obtain is that foreshadowed in the holding that if the defendant in printing the reports for its own benefit unlawfully used manuscripts and other property entrusted to its care to enable it to perform its contract for the manufacture of the specified volumes for the state, the state might recover the value of the use of the state's prop erty and any damage that might have been done to the property in so using it, or if the use amounted to a conversion it might recover the value of the property; but this would not give the state title to the books so unlawfully produced so as to •enable it by injunction to prevent the defendant from disposing of the books or entitle it to an accounting of the proceeds of the sales.
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of action, the Supreme Court declares that it shows an actionable libel.
This decision is important in that it extends the action for defamation to include cases where damages have been intentionally caused by lauda tory or commendatory language. The rule as generally stated is, that in order to recover damages arising from defamation the language complained of must be defamatory in its nature. This is made necessary by the general principle that a defendant is liable only for such damage as is the natural and proximate result of his act. The plain tiff in an action for defamation must, as in any other action of tort, prove that the act of the defendant caused him damage in a direct, natural, and prox imate way. He may be aided in such proof by certain presumptions which the law will make, as, for example, where the words are said to be action able per se. If, however, the words are not action able per se, he must prove that they caused him "special damage." Special damage is such as naturally and proximately follows from the lan guage published. It is only when words are defamatory in their nature that they can be said to cause damage in a natural and proximate way. If the words are not in their nature defamatory, they cannot as a natural consequence cause loss, and the plaintiff cannot prove the necessary special damage. While it is true that laudatory language does not naturally or usually produce damage, and while in most instances damages resulting from such language would be unnatural and too remote, still it is incorrect to say that TORTS. (Libel — publication.) La. — A very commendatory language cannot produce damage. remarkable determination as to what constitutes If a plaintiff can prove that laudatory language a libellous publication is contained in Martin v. uttered concerning him has actually caused him Picayune, 40 Southern Reporter, 376. Plaintiff damage, in a proximate way, and that the defend was a physician apparently of high standing in ant intended such result to follow, it would seem his profession and was a member of a medical that he ought to be allowed to recover, if not in society, the members of which were opposed to an action for defamation, then in an action on the advertising by physicians and had passed resolu case. This is the principle of the above decision. tions denouncing that practice. Defendant news It appears that the defendant knew that publishing paper learned of a remarkable cure effected by the account of the plaintiff's skill in effecting a the professional skill of plaintiff, and published a wonderful cure would create an impression that rather glowing account of the case, stating that he was advertising himself, and therefore bring other physicians had treated the patient without him into hatred, ridicule, and contempt with his effect, and containing various other laudatory re fellow physicians, to his damage. Knowing this, marks. Plaintiff alleged that this publication, the court said it is possible to impute to the defend which, though true and obtained from the father ant an intention or purpose to produce this result, of the patient, was not authorized by plaintiff, and if he had such intention, he is liable, although had a tendency to lead the public and his brother he produced the result by publishing commenda practitioners to believe that hie was advertising, tory language. The proposition of the case seems and thereby caused them to class him in the to be this: The intentional causing of damage category of quacks, who alone, it is alleged, re to another by the publication of laudatory language sorted to advertising. Reversing a holding of will sustain an action, presumably, for defamation. E. A. Gilmore. the lower court that this petition stated no cause
