Kennedy v. Cannon

This appeal questions whether the trial court erred in directing a verdict for the defendant, an attorney, in a suit for slander on the grounds that the allegedly slanderous statement was privileged as part of the defendant’s duty as counsel to his client, and that no malice on the part of the defendant had been shown.

The appellee, Robert Powell Cannon (defendant below), was summoned to the Wicomico County jail in Salisbury at the request of Charles L. Humphreys, a Negro who had been arrested early that morning and charged with the rape of the appellant, Jane Linton Kennedy, a white, married…