Preston

This is an action to recover damages for slander.

The plaintiff is an unmarried woman, and the defendants are husband and wife.

*108 The complaint alleges “that on the seventh day of October, 1889, in San Diego County, California, the defendant Sarah F. Frey maliciously spoke and published in the presence and hearing of J. F. Walker, of and concerning the plaintiff, the false, unprivileged, scandalous, and slanderous words following, to wit [then setting them out], and that said defendant thereby intended and did impute to plaintiff a want of chastity, and the defendant was so understood thereby by those who heard her, to plaintiff’s damage in the sum of twenty thousand dollars.”

The defendants answered, specifically denying the said allegations of the complaint, and for a separate defense pleaded, in substance, that prior to said seventh day of October certain controversies and differences, set forth in the answer, existed between plaintiff and the defendant Sarah F. Frey; that the said Walker was an attorney at law and justice of the peace at Perris, in the county of San Diego; that at the request of plaintiff, and pursuant to agreement between plaintiff and defendant and…