Turner

Appeals from the judgment and from the order denying defendant a new trial.

The action was for damages for libel. Defendant in his newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, on the seventh day of December, 1893, published what purported to be an account of difficulties existing between Lotta, an actress, and Turner, the plaintiff. In this account it was stated that Lotta had caused Turner’s arrest upon a criminal charge, and that “the case was compromised, together with the settlement of several thousand dollars in notes, given by the Plumas county lawyer to the actress.”

On the trial it appeared, and was undisputed, that the article in question was printed and published in the Examiner. It further appeared that the matters in the article set forth were true, saving that the charges by Lotta were directed against one John H. Thomas, and not against John W. Turner; that Turner was entirely innocent of any wrongdoing, and had in fact been the legal adviser of Lotta in her troubles with the said Thomas.

The error in the Examiner’s publication occurred in the following manner: The issue of the San Francisco Post of the day proceeding the Examiner publication, had contained an accurate…