IN MITIORI SENSU (Lat. in a milder ac ceptation).
A pbraae denoting a rule of construction formerly adopted in slander suits, the object of which was to construe phrases, if possible, so that they would not support an action. ingenuity was continually exer cised to devise or discover a meaning which by some remote possibility the speaker might have intended; and some ludicrous examples of this ingenuity may be found. To say of a man who was making his livelihood by buying and selling merchandise, "He is a base, broken rascal ; he has broken twice, and I'll make him break a third time," was gravely as serted not to be actionable,—"ne poet dar porter action, car poet estre intend de burstness de belly." Latch 114. And to call a man a thief was declared to be no slander for this reason: "perhaps the speaker might mean he had stolen a lady's heart" The rule now is to construe words agreeably to the meaning usually attached to them. It was long, however, before this rule, rational as it is, and sup ported by every legal analogy, prevailed in actions for words, and before the favorite doctrine of con struing words in their mildest sense, in direct oppo sition to the finding of the jury, was finally aban doned by the courts. "For some inscrutable rea
son," said Gibson, J., "the earlier English judges discouraged the action of slander by all sorts of evasions, such as the doctrine of mitiorti sensu, and by requiring the slanderous charge to hays been uttered with the technical precision of an indict ment. But, as this discouragement of tha remedy by process of law was found inversely to encourage the remedy by battery, it has been gradually fall ing into disrepute, inasmuch that the precedents in Croke's Reports are beginning to be considered apocryphal." Bash v. Sommer, 20 Pa. 162; Walton v. Singleton, 7 S. & R. (Pa.) 461, 10 Am. Dec. 472; Wilson v. Hogg, 1 N. & McC. (S. C.) 217; Walker v. Winn, 8 Mass. 248; Hoyle v. Young, 1 Wash. (Va.) 152, 1 Am, Dec. 446 ; Heard, Lib. & SI. § 162.