Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 157, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 July 1910 — LEGAL INFORMATION [ARTICLE]

LEGAL INFORMATION

The defendant's newspaper, in Peck v. Tribune Company, 29 Supreme Court Reporter, 554, published, in an advertisement of whisky, a portrait of plaintiff in connection with a signed statement purporting to have been made by her that she was a f nurse, had used the whisky for herself and patients and recommended it. In her suit for libel in publishing the portrait, plaintiff alleged that she was not the woman whose name was signed to the recommendation, that she was not a nurse, and was a total abstainer. It was suggested in defense that defendant published the portrait by mistake, and without kithwledge that it was plaintiff’s poror was not what it purported to be. The court says that defendant took the risk in publishing the portrait, and the usual principle- of tort make him liable if the • representations are false. It could not be said that the obvious tendency of what was imputed to plaintiff by the advertisement was not to seriously hurt her standing with a considerable and respectable class of the community. The United States Supreme Court, reversing the decision of the lower court, concluded that plaintiff was entitled to have her case submitted to the jury. In Harper & Bro. et al. v. Kalem Co. et al., 169 Federal Reporter, 61, it appeared t/hat defendant had employed a person to read Ben Hur and to write a deserption of it which might be utilized by a moving picture machine. The dramatization of this book had previously been copyrighted by the plaintiff. Defendant advertised the films thus taken as capable of producing a moving picture spectacle of Ben Hur, and sent its advertisement to the proprietors of theatoriums. The United States Circuit Court of Appeals holds that when a film is put on an exhibiting machine which reproduces the action of the characters, it becomes a dramatization. Moving pictures are a form of expression infringing not the copyrighted book or drama, but the author’s exclusive' right to dramatize ihis writings, and to publicly perform such dramatize tion. - . „ That noise on the Sabbath might be obliterated, Georgia enacted a statute which frowned upon the discharge of firearms on Sunday. - For transgressing this provision Manning was convicted. In Manning v. State, 64 Southeastern Reporter, 710, tt appeared that defendant’s breach of the statute' had been occasioned by his effort to terminate" the headlong career of a rabid dog. The Georgia Court of Appeals held that a mad dog was a public enemy, and that it was for the Jury to determine whether shooting at one on Sunday was & willful and wanton shooting, within the meaning of the statute, although they might believe that the dog was fleeing at the time he was shot at, and that neither the defendant’s person nor his property was in danger.