sarily must have had a tendency to expose the defendant to hatred, contempt, ridicule, or obloquy, or cause him to be shunned or avoided. In our opinion the publication is not susceptible of such interpretation. This—is not a case wherein the plaintiff has been charged with being a common liar, or with having made false statements in the course of business or in the discharge of official duties. Nor is it a case where the plaintiff has been exposed to ridicule or obloquy as a result of a charge that he has wilfully falsified facts, incidents, and situations. The alleged libelous statement was contained in an article published by the defendant in answer to an article published by the plaintiff of and concerning the defendant. In his article the plaintiff had said that he did certain things “with all fairness.” The defendant countered by saying that the plaintiff tells falsehoods in that he says he does things with all fairness.” No case has been cited where a statement, made in words and under circumstances anything like similar to those here, has been held libelous per se. A somewhat similar question was considered by the Supreme Court of Connecticut in Walker v. Hawley, 56 Conn. 559, 16 Atl. 674. In that case the defendants published of the plaintiff, in a political journal conducted by them the following:
‘This part of the state was especially favored by the Democratic state committee by the wholesale circulation of the remarkable letter of Albert H. Walker, giving his so-called reasons for falsely asserting that Mr. Lounsbury’s nomination was secured by corrupt means.”
And it was contended that the words "falsely asserted" must be interpreted as imputing to the plaintiff a wilful falsehood. The Supreme Court of Connecticut overruled this contention, and held that the words must be construed in connection with the subject to which they related, namely, the letter which the statement purported to answer, and not as an attack upon the personal veracity of the writer of the letter. In its Opinion, the court said, in part:
“A false assertion, in logic, ordinarily has a somewhat modified meaning. To say of a man that he reasons from false premises, or draws false conclusions from correct premises, is not libelous. In such cases the word ‘false’ means no more than that the premises were not true, or that the conclusion was erroneous. So also, to say of an advocate before a jury that he falsely asserted the guilt or innocence of the accused, that he falsely maintained the affirmative or negative of the issue, is not libelous, inasmuch as it means simply a mistaken view as to the effect of
