88 A.D.2d 740 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1982
— Appeal from an order of the Supreme Court at Special Term (Klein, J.), entered May 12, 1981 in Schenectady County, which denied defendant General Electric Credit Corporation’s motion for summary judgment and codefendant John P. Browne’s cross motion for summary judgment. Plaintiffs were owners of Marcella’s Appliance Sales and Service, Inc., a retail appliance business in Schenectady, New York. Defendant General Electric Credit Corporation was a secured creditor of inventory in plaintiffs’ possession, and the individual defendant, John P. Browne, was its zone manager. The complaint alleges that defendant Browne, in the presence of two of plaintiffs’ creditors and other persons at plaintiffs’ place of business, stated: “The Vaccas are crooks and hijackers and you are going to find a lot of your units missing, and if you leave your merchandise here and don’t entrust it to General Electric Credit Corporation for safe-keeping, you will find more will be missing”. Defendants moved for summary judgment dismissing plaintiffs’ complaint, which seeks damages for this alleged defamatory statement, contending that the complaint fails to state a cause of action and that the statement, if made, was protected by a qualified privilege. Special Term denied their motions and this appeal ensued. Initially, we find no merit to defendants’ claim that the statement is not slander per se. The words “crooks and hijackers”, when considered in the context in which they were used, can readily be interpreted as importing to plaintiffs fraud, dishonesty, misconduct or unfitness in their business, which constitutes slander per se (Russo v Padovano, 84 AD2d 925). A statement which concerns a person in his trade or business and tends to injure him therein is actionable per se (Nichols v Item Publishers, 309 NY 596, 600; McCullough v Certain Teed Prods. Corp., 70