Pfeifly v. Henry
Pfeifly v. Henry
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
Plaintiff’s action is to recover damages for slander based on language he avers tended to charge him with dishonesty in business. The court below was of opinion the proofs were insufficient to sustain the averment contained in the statement of claim and entered a compulsory nonsuit which it subsequently refused to take off. Plaintiff appealed.
Plaintiff was engaged in the business of selling flour, feed and farm products at the town of Lynnport in Le-high County. The statement of claim charges defendant with uttering slanderous words in the Pennsylvania German dialect tending to injure plaintiff in his trade and business; the words used, translated into English, were that plaintiff “does not weigh correctly, he had shown me how to fix the scales when he went away,” the innuendo averring that defendant, who had previously been in plaintiff’s employ, thereby meant to charge plaintiff with falsifying his scales and selling merchandise to customers by false weight, a criminal offense. In support of these averments a witness testified defendant said “Mr. Pfeifly weighed dishonest and Mr. Pfeifly should have shown Mr. Henry how to set the scales in his [plaintiff’s] absence” or that he “didn’t weigh correctly, he showed him [defendant] how to set the scales
The judgment is reversed and venire facias de novo awarded.
Reference
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- Syllabus
- Blander — Ambiguous language — Innuendo—Falsifying scales— Case for jury. 1. Where words have a double or doubtful meaning, the plaintiff in an action for slander may, by innuendo, charge which meaning he attributes to them; it then becomes a question for the jury to say whether the language was used with that meaning or uttered in a different sense. 2. In an action of slander by a person in trade against a former employee, where the language charged is that plaintiff “does not weigh correctly, he -had shown me how to fix the scales when he went away,” and the innuendo avers that defendant meant to charge plaintiff with falsifying his scales and selling merchandise by false weight, a criminal offense, the case is for the jury.