Kilian v. Doubleday & Co., Inc.
Pennsylvania Supreme Court
79 A.2d 657 (Pa. 1951)
Author O'Connell wrote a first-person account for Doubleday (defendant) describing Colonel Kilian (plaintiff) committing cruel and unusual punishment at a WWII prison camp, though O'Connell was never actually at the camp and rewrote secondhand stories into a false first-person narrative at his professor's suggestion; Kilian had actually been convicted only of neglect, not the other crimes described. Kilian sued for libel, the jury found for Doubleday, and Kilian's motion for a new trial was denied.
Whether it is sufficient, in asserting the affirmative defense of truth in a libel action, for the defendant to claim he heard the content of his publication from third parties without offering any real proof that the statements are true.