McClatchy v. Superior Court of Sacramento

Citations

• 119 Cal. 413
• 51 P. 696

Syllabus

<p>Contempt op Court—Newspaper Publications—Report op Evidence—Criticism op Judge—Refusal to Permit Evidence—Excess op Jurisdiction—Certiorari.—Where a charge of contempt of court against a publisher of a newspaper alleged the making of publications therein, which were “false, scandalous, and defamatory,” and “intended to degrade the said court, and excite public prejudice and odium against it, and were unlawful interferences with the proceedings of the court,” and it appeared that an account of testimony given in a pending cause was published therein, and that the judge upon his attention being called thereto by an attorney in the cause, stated from the bench that it was a grossly false and fabricated statement, whereupon the newspaper reasserted the truth of the account and declared that the attorney and judge knew it was correct, and severely criticised the judge, and expressed contempt for him for approving “the unmitigated falsehood of an attorney”; and where the defense to the charge of contempt of court was that the publications were in fact true, and not made with any wrongful intent, and that the personal references to the judge were merely in response to his aspersions in characterizing the statements in the newspaper as false and fabricated, when they were in fact true, and that such references were not made with purpose of interfering with the administration of justice; and where the publications were admitted to have been made, and the only testimony in support of the charge was that of the court reporter, to the effect that the matter published did not correspond with his notes of the evidence, and that prior to the second publication he had furnished to the publisher a correct transcript of his notes; and the judge refused to permit the publisher to introduce evidence to prove the truth of the account of evidence published, held, that an order adjudging him guilty of contempt of court was in excess of jurisdiction, and should be annulled upon certiora