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8 Blackf. 414

Stucker v. Davis

Indiana Supreme Court

Decided June 24, 1847

Indiana Supreme Court · decided 1847-06-24

<p>The innuendoes in a declaration in slander should be warranted by the previous allegations.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1847-06-24

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently March 1903

5 state decisions

201847185018601870188018901900decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Blackford, J.

¶1Slander. The declaration, so far as it necessary to state it, alleges that a certain horse belonging to the defendant 'had been stolen, and that he, the defendant, in a conversation with divers persons of and concerning the plaintiff and of and concerning said larceny, falsely and maliciously spoke and published of and concerning the plaintiff and of and concerning said larceny the false, scandalous, and defamatory words following, to wit, I (meaning defendant) know who has my horse (meaning the horse so as aforesaid stolen); and he (the plaintiff meaning) has my horse. I (defendant meaning) have sent a company of men down there (meaning to the neighbourhood of Tannehill’s mills and the plaintiff’s house) to make search (meaning to search for the horse so as aforesaid stolen from the defendant), and I (the defendant meaning) verily believe he (the plaintiff’ meaning) has my horse. (Thereby meaning that the plaintiff had stolen the defendant’s horse.)

¶2General demurrer to the declaration, and judgment for the defendant.

¶3It is necessary in these cases that the innuendoes should be warranted by the previous allegations in the declaration. The words now before us, viz., that the plaintiff' had the defendant’s horse, cannot be fairly considered to signify, with the assistance of the prefatory allegations and colloquium, that the plaintiff' had stolen the defendant’s horse. The consequence is, that the declaration is bad on demurrer.

Per Curiam.

¶4The judgment is affirmed with costs.

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