JUDGMENT

Daniels, J. - This is an appeal in a suit for defamation brought by the plaintiff, a peshkar in the employ of the Bareilly Municipal Board, against four members of the Board. The Board had passed a resolution on the 15th of September, 1919 that the plaintiff should be removed from service. The Commissioner asked for a further report from the Board before accepting the resolution. The majority of the Board then went back on their previous opinion and recommended the reinstatement of the plaintiff. The four defendants wrote a dissentient note. The dissenting note contains the following passage which is relied on by the plaintiff as furnishing his cause of action:

who has earned a notoriety for quarrelsomeness, not only by assuming a defiant and insulting attitude before a full house towards a member of the Board (which formed the subject-matter of the case against him), but also by resorting to similar acts while in service under his former employers, but rather had been at the root of much friction lately in evidence in the Board's working.

2. The learned Subordinate Judge, Babu Govind Sarup Mathur, in an excellent judgment, dismissed the suit, and it is much to be regretted that the District Judge should have been persuaded to disturb his decision. The occasion was obviously privileged, and the Subordinate Judge found that two out of the three statements contained in the alleged libel were fully justified. As to the third, he found that there had been dissension in the Board, and, though there was no actual proof on the record that the plaintiff was responsible for the dissension, he found that it was generally believed, and was believed, in good faith by the defendants that the plaintiff was responsible. He found, therefore, that the alleged libel was written in good faith in the discharge of a public duty and was not actionable.

3. The learned District Judge, in an inordinately long judgment, has reversed this decision. It is perhaps indicative of the weakness of the case which the learned-District Judge set himself to argue that he should have found it necessary to write-a judgment three times as long as that of the trial Judge, though the latter had dealt adequately with all the issues arising in the case. The judgment is so long and contains so much repetition, that it is not altogether easy to reconcile different, portions of it and to discover exactly what the learned District Judge means to find. Some passages dealing with the attitude of the defendants towards the Chairman of the Board are quite irrelevant for the< purpose of the present suit.

5. It is quite clear, on the findings of the learned District Judge himself, that there is no case against the second, third and fourth defendants. The learned Judge expressly finds that there is no proof of malice on their part. He thinks that they are liable because they signed the note jointly with the first defendants, whom he finds to have been actuated by malice; It is hardly necessary to say that this is a mistaken view of the law. If the three defendants are entitled to claim privilege and acted without express malice, they do not lose their right because the first defendant may have had ether motives. If four persons commit a joint tort, they are no doubt all equally liable, but these three defendants committed no tort at all. They only used language which they were justified in using in the bonafide discharge of a public duty.

6. There had been some previous enmity between the first defendant and the plaintiff, and on this ground, and because he finds that the defendant has not proved the truth of the statements used, the learned Judge holds that the defendant was actuated by malice The plaintiff's Counsel contends that these are pure findings of fact which conclude the case against this defendant. It is, therefore, necessary to examine how far the learned Judge's conclusions are conclusions of fact and how far they are legal inferences from other facts which he has