G.R. No. L-9986 and L-9891, December 22, 1915
UY TIOCO, ET AL., plaintiffs-appellants, vs. YANG SHU WEN, ET AL., defendants-appellees.

FACTS:
The plaintiffs, Uy Tioco and another, were the president and treasurer, respectively, of the Manila branch of the Chinese society “Kio Koc Sia,” which promoted a boycott of Japanese goods. They filed a libel suit against the defendants based on an article published in the Cablenews-American on February 28, 1913. The article reported that the Chinese Consul-General, Yang Shu Wen, stated that the boycott society had secretly offered a P10,000 reward for his assassination, that Governor-General Forbes favored the deportation of the boycott leaders, and that these leaders were a menace to the community. The plaintiffs alleged that this article defamed them personally. The trial court ruled in favor of the defendants, and the plaintiffs appealed.

ISSUE:
Whether the published article constituted libel against the plaintiffs as individual members and officers of the Kio Koc Sia society.

RULING:
The Supreme Court AFFIRMED the trial court’s judgment, holding that the article was not actionable libel against the plaintiffs. The Court ruled:
1. The defamatory statements in the article were directed against the boycott society or a faction within it in general terms. The article did not specifically name or identify the plaintiffs as the individuals who offered the reward or who were to be deported. It was only in a subsequent article published on March 2, 1913, that specific names were mentioned.
2. Defamatory remarks made against a class or group in general language are not actionable by individual members unless the statements are so sweeping as to condemn every member without exception. Here, the society was large enough that it would be unreasonable to infer that all members, including the plaintiffs, personally advocated or were responsible for the violent acts attributed to some members.
3. The defendants’ attempt to justify the publication by proving the society was harmful did not succeed in linking the plaintiffs to the specific allegation of offering a reward for murder, which was the core of the defamatory charge.
4. The plaintiffs’ good reputation was presumed, but the impersonal nature of the article did not directly attack their individual characters.

Arellano, C.J., Torres, Johnson, Carson, and Araullo, JJ., concurred.