Hanley

Defendant Eobert H. Lund, an attorney, appeals from a judgment entered on a verdict in plaintiff’s favor in the latter’s action for slander.

Plaintiff is a medical doctor who specializes in pediatrics. He is actively engaged in practice in Bellflower, California, and draws his patients almost entirely from Bellflower and the surrounding communities. Until June of 1956 plaintiff was the personal physician of Gale Osborn, Jr., a minor. In June 1956 plaintiff suggested to the minor’s parents that the child be hospitalized at the City of Hope. The child was then referred by the City of Hope to the Children’s Hospital. The child died in. December 1957. After the death of the child, the parents, retained defendant as their attorney, and defendant filed suit against plaintiff, among others. The suit charged that the defendants therein had negligently diagnosed and treated the child, which negligence resulted in its death. It is not now contended that plaintiff was guilty of the alleged negligence nor that the defamatory statements made about him and set forth in footnote 1 were true.

Don Haddock, a reporter for Twin Coast Newspapers, be.came curious when the negligence action was…