Defendant Boota Singh Basi (“Boota”) demurs to the complaint (“Complaint”) filed by plaintiff Jasjeet Singh (“Plaintiff”).

On November 12, 2013, Plaintiff filed the Complaint asserting a single cause of action for libel against Boota, among others. According to the allegations of the Complaint, Boota is the president and chief editor of a daily newspaper known as the “Sanjhi Soch Weekly Newspaper” (the “Newspaper”) which is circulated in the Bay Area, among other locales. (Complaint at ¶ 2.) The Newspaper is also available online. (Id.)

On August 22, 2013, Boota and other defendants published an article in the Newspaper that contained the following statements:

According to one report, Jasjeet Singh Chela and his associates have deep links with the Indian Consulate. The Consulate itself asks these people to do the demonstrations. During the day these people raise slogans against the Consulate, and in the evening they enjoy feasts with the officials of the Indian Consulate.

It is due to the secret alliance of Jasjit Singh Chela and his associates with the Indian Consulate that Punjabis and especially Sikhs are denied and delayed in procuring visas to travel to India, but later, Chela and his associates who are agents of the Indian Consulate, intervene and take huge amounts of money to procure Indian visas and passports …. According to this report, Chela and his associates work as agents of the Indian Consulate.

(Complaint at ¶ 22 and Exhibit A.)

The reference to “demonstrations” and “slogans against the consulate” is to a statement earlier in the article regarding Plaintiff’s participation in protests against human rights violations by the Government of India. According to Plaintiff, the foregoing statements are libelous on their face because they accuse him, a Sikh, of being connected to the Indian Government. (Complaint at ¶ 23.)

On January 24, 2014, Boota filed the instant demurrer to the Complaint on the ground of failure to state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action. (Code Civ. Proc., § 430.10, subd. (e).) Boota asserts that Plaintiff has failed to state a claim for libel because he has not pleaded special damages.

Libel, which is a defined as a “false and unprivileged publication by writing, printing …, which exposes any person to hatred, contempt, ridicule, or obloquy, or which causes him to be shunned or avoided, or which has a tendency to injure him in his occupation” (Civ. Code, § 45), can either be per se or per quod. (See Palm Springs Tennis Club v. Rangel (1999) 73 Cal.App.4th 1, 5.) These concepts have been defined thusly:

If the defamatory meaning appears from the language itself without the necessity of explanation or the pleading of extrinsic facts, there is libel per se. [Citation.] If, however, the defamatory meaning would appear only to readers who might be able to recognize it through some knowledge of specific facts and/or circumstances, not discernible from the face of the publication, and which are not matters of common knowledge rationally attributable to all reasonable persons, then the libel cannot be libel per se but will be libel per quod. [Citation.]

(Id.)

Where the defamatory matter is not actionable per se, special damages must be pleaded. (See Civ. Code, § 45a; see also Pridonoff v. Balokovich (1951) 36 Cal.2d 788, 791; Babcock v. MacClatchy Newspapers (1947) 82 Cal.App.2d 528, 532.) Special damages are those which a plaintiff “has suffered in respect to his property, business, trade, profession or occupation, including such amounts of money as the plaintiff alleges and proves he has expended as a result of the alleged libel ….” (Civ. Code, § 48a.)

Boota asserts that Plaintiff’s allegations constitute libel per quod given his explanation in the Complaint that the subject portion of the Newspaper article is libelous because the Sikh community and the Indian government are at odds with one another and Plaintiff is a Sikh. (See Complaint at ¶ 23.) This assertion is unavailing.

While it may be true that the quoted portions of the article are capable of the meaning articulated in paragraph 23 of the Complaint only if an explanation regarding the nature of the relationship between the Sikh community and the Indian government is provided, another type of defamatory meaning is readily apparent from the language of the article by itself- that Plaintiff is dishonest, deceptive, manipulative and greedy. Consequently, Plaintiff need not plead special damages in order to state a claim for libel and therefore Boota’s demurrer is OVERRULED.