[546]. The learned judge here discussed McDonald v. Snelling, 14 All. 290, and Rigby v. Hewitt, 5 Ex. 240, and cited 2 Pars. Cont. 456; Dixon v. Fawcus, 30 L. J. Q. B. 137; Tarleton v. McGawley, Peake, 270; Bell v. Midland Co., 10 C. B. N. S. 307 Keeble v. Hickeringill, 11 East, 574, n.
[547]. Defendant put out an envelope, with the word “telegram” conspicuously printed thereon, similar to that used by plaintiff, a telegraph company, to be used for advertising circulars. Plaintiff claimed that it tended to make its patrons think plaintiff was imposing on them by allowing advertisers to use its facilities in order to gain their attention and so injured its business. An injunction was denied. Postal Telegraph Co. v. Livermore & Knight Co., 188 Fed. 696.
In Riding v. Smith, 1 Ex. D. 91, plaintiff sued for injury to his business due to defendant’s charging his wife with adultery, by reason whereof customers ceased to deal with him.
In Hamon v. Falle, 4 App. Cas. 247, an officer of an insurance company notified a shipowner that the company would not insure the ship if plaintiff was employed as master. Defendant set up that he honestly believed plaintiff unfit. See also Bowen v. Matheson, 14 All. 499.
In Morasse v. Brochu, 151 Mass. 567, defendant in a sermon warned his congregation against a physician who had been excommunicated for remarrying after divorce.
[548]. Only the opinion of the court is given.
[549]. The opinion of the court on this point is omitted. The defendant’s contention was not sustained.
[550]. Only the opinion is given.
[551]. “It is contended that the amount of the plaintiff’s loss is so entirely a matter of pure chance as to be incapable of assessment. I cannot for this purpose draw any distinction between a chance and a probability. In the Oxford English Dictionary one of the definitions of ‘chance’ is ‘a possibility or probability of anything happening, as distinct from a certainty,’ and a citation is given from Reid’s Intellectual Powers, ‘The doctrine of chances is a branch of mathematics little more than an hundred years old.’ The two words ‘chance’ and ‘probability’ may be treated as being practically interchangeable, though it may be that the one is somewhat less definite than the other.... It is obvious, of course, that the chance or probability may in a given case be so slender that a jury could not properly give more than nominal damages, say one shilling; if they had done so in the present case, it would have been entirely a question for them, and this Court could not have interfered. But in the present competition we find chance upon chance, two of which the plaintiff had succeeded in passing. From being one of six thousand she had become a member of a class of fifty, and, as I understand it, was first in her particular division by the votes of readers of the paper; out of those fifty there were to be selected twelve prize-winners; it is obvious that her chances were then far greater and more easily assessable than when she was only one of the original six thousand. If the plaintiff had never been selected at all, the case would have been very different; but that was not the case. In my opinion the existence of a contingency, which is dependent on the volition of a third person, is not enough to justify us in saying that the damages are incapable of assessment.” Farwell, L. J., in Chaplin v. Hicks, [1911] 2 K. B. 786, 798.
[552]. Adler v. Fenton, 24 How. 407; Findlay v. McAllister, 113 U. S. 104 (semble); Austin v. Barrows, 41 Conn. 287; Green v. Kimble, 6 Blackf. 552; Moody v. Burton, 27 Me. 427; Lamb v. Stone, 11 Pick. 527; Wellington v. Small, 3 Cush. 145; Security Bank v. Reger, (Okl.) 151 Pac. 1170; LeGierse v. Kellum, 66 Tex. 242 Accord.