Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 February 1904 — SENT TO NEWTON COUNTY. [ARTICLE]

SENT TO NEWTON COUNTY.

Abe’s Two Latest Libel Suits Against The Democrat Editor Are Venued From This County. The two libel cases filed by “Honest Abe” against The Democrat man were called up in court Tuesday morning and a change of venue taken by the defendant from this county. Pending the court’s ruling on the change of venue, motion was made to quash one of the affidavits, on which the alleged libelous charge was a simple three-liner in The Democrat on Dec. 6, 1902, which read: “And the public funds still flow to spite Abe’s enemies and please his friends.” Defendant’s counsel took the position that there was nothing libelous in the words complained of; that there was no imputation that any crime had been committed in the few words published (which, by the way, was the full text of the article) and that an action for criminal libel would not lie. The court held that the words were libelous, however, and the case will have to be tried. The motion to quash in the other affidavit was not argued, but will be heard in the other court. The words complained of in this case appeared in a threefourths column article in The Democrat of Nov. 1, 1902, summing up the article in question, which went on to state that in the campaign of 1898 Abe had worked the dodge that the taxdodgers were fighting him and rode into office on that thunder that the county would be enriched thousands of dollars by the taxpayers investigation which he (Abe) was fathering; that the result of said investigation showed that it had been a losing game for the tax-payers, etc; that he was using the same burned powder in his campaign then on. The article concluded:

“Don’t trust Abe, he is as slippery as an eel and as tricky as a Moro native of the Philippines. You will rue it for three years if you return him to the office he has so long disgraced.” It is a well known axiom of the law of libel that the whole writing or article must be taken as a whole and construed as a whole. Words standing alone which might be libelous, are not so when taken in connection with the whole article. The words above v quoted are all that Mr. Halleck alleges are libelous, and are all that he mentions in his affidavit. The very fact that he has waited a year and a half before beginning any action shows that he is animated more by animos than anything else in the prosecution. The fact that he has still another libel suit against the editor of this paper, for a statement published that he was not financially responsible for a nickle, and that as a protection we had procured a judgment that had been taken against him, and had ordered out an execution to ascertain whether or not a collection could be enforced against him, might have actuated him to bring the present actions. In any event we are still waiting for the S2OO judgment to be paid.