Ellsworth v. Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory

1 Citing case

  1. Memphis Pub. Co. v. Nichols

    569 S.W.2d 412 (Tenn. 1978)   Cited 166 times
    Holding that the preliminary question of whether the published article was capable of being understood in a defamatory sense is a question of law to be determined by the court

    Other jurisdictions have followed the seventeenth-century English doctrine of mitior sensu, applicable to slander, which required that words be given an innocent construction whenever humanly possible. See, e.g., John v. Tribune Co., 24 Ill.2d 437, 181 N.E.2d 105 (1962), cert. denied, 371 U.S. 877, 83 S.Ct. 148, 9 L.Ed.2d 114 (1962); Johnson v. Campbell, 91 Ohio App. 483, 108 N.E.2d 749 (1952); Tulas Tribune Co. v. Kight, 174 Okl. 359, 50 P.2d 350 (1935); Ruble v. Kirkwood, 125 Or. 316, 266 P. 252 (1928); Manley v. Harer, 73 Mont. 253, 235 P. 757 (1925); Dalton v. Woodward, 134 Neb. 915, 280 N.W. 215 (1938); Ellsworth v. Martindale Hubbell Law Directory, 66 N.D. 578, 268 N.W. 400 (1936). The art of construing in mitior sensu probably reached its zenith (or perhaps its nadir) in the famous case of Holt v. Astrigg, 79 Eng.Rep. 161 (1608).