Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation v. Ring Lardner, Jr.

Ring Lardner, Jr., plaintiff and appellee, in the year 1947 was working under written contract as a screen writer for Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation. The latter, defendant and appellant, will hereinafter be referred to as “Fox.”

Lardner was discharged on November 28, 1947, by Fox. Lardner filed suit and obtained judgment for approximately $25,000 in salary accruing after his discharge. This is a diversity case and Fox has appealed.

The events leading up to the discharge of Lardner start in 1947 with an investigation and hearings of the Un-American Activities Committee of the United States House of Representatives investigating alleged Communist infiltration of the motion picture industry. In advance, House investigators had been to Hollywood, but the actual hearings were in Washington. Those hearings with which we are concerned were held in October, 1947.

Lardner was one of ten witnesses from the motion picture employees who declined to tell the committee whether they were members of the Communist party. The refusal was oblique. The answers were not responsive to the questions and essentially consisted of questioning the authority of the congressional committee. The…