Jennings

The superior court granted the motion for nonsuit of the San Luis Obispo County Telegram-Tribune and various individual defendants in a libel action, and plaintiff Ethan Jennings, Jr., appeals, We find the newspaper’s allegedly defamatory descriptions of Jennings’ federal tax prosecution sufficiently within the “literary license” of a newspaper reporting official proceedings that the so-called “fair report” privilege of Civil Code section 47, subdivision 4 was established as a matter of law on plaintiff’s evidence, and thus affirm.

I

In April 1977 Ethan A. Jennings, Jr., a long-time resident and an established architect in San Luis Obispo, was accused in district court in Los Angeles of failing to file income tax returns for the years 1970 and 1971, when he allegedly received gross income of approximately $180,000 and $256,000. On May 10, 1977, accompanied by present counsel, he pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor offenses of “willfully and knowingly” failing to file income tax returns for those two calendar years ( 26 U.S.C. § 7203 ).

The next morning, Pete Dunan, a staff writer for the Telegram-Tribune, heard a radio report and read a brief article in the Los…