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Civil Procedure Keyed to Field
Gunder v. New York Times Co.
Citation:
37 F. Supp. 911 (S.D.N.Y. 1941)Facts
The plaintiff, Gunder, served as chairman of the board of directors of a corporation and was found liable in New York Supreme Court for voting to pay dividends out of capital in violation of law, resulting in a judgment of $746,234. The New York Times published a news article describing this judgment in certain editions of its newspaper. The article detailed the judgment amount, the aggregate losses of $569,471, the corporation’s capitalization of $750,000, and various dates when illegal dividends were voted. Plaintiff did not challenge the overall accuracy of the article but claimed that one specific sentence was libelous: “After these payments, aggregating $104,000 were made the company had remaining assets of only $93,471.” The article described five additional dividends totaling $440,000 that were voted after the first dividend, making the complained-of sentence internally inconsistent and apparently erroneous. In subsequent editions, the article carried a headline stating “Insolvency to cost Chairman $746,234,” which plaintiff also challenged as defamatory because the corporation was bankrupt, not technically insolvent.
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