Bone to pick

"I say, Winthrop," he cried, "I've got a bone to pick with you. You've been hitting me pretty hard in that rag of yours. Do you know what a public man down in the Gulf States does with an editor who attacks him?"

There are a few plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions in lesser populated areas, but big-city courts had few suits that did not involve medical error and "a legitimate bone to pick."