A claim for libel in respect of a letter which it was admitted had been published on an occasion of qualified privilege was struck out as there was no realistic prospect of establishing malice and defeating the defence.
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The Court of Appeal upheld Tugendhat J’s ruling, pursuant to s.69 of the Senior Courts Act 1981, that a libel trial should take place without a jury. The Court reaffirmed the constitutional importance of the right to trial by jury and emphasised that in apply s.69 care should be taken not to give too much independent weight to the increase in time and costs which a jury would involve.
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The definition of defamatory must include a qualification or threshold of seriousness, so as to exclude trivial claims. One of the passages that the Claimant complained of, suggesting that she effectively gave interviewees for her book copy approval (a practice which was said to be disapproved of by journalists), was either not defamatory of her at all or was below the threshold of seriousness. As such the complaint in respect of that passage was struck out.
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The rule in defamation that words are taken to have a single meaning by which their truth or falsity can be ascertained did not apply in malicious falsehood claims, and a claimant could seek a remedy for publication of words which only some readers would interpret as bearing a meaning which was false.
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A defendant could not rely on qualified privilege in respect of the publication of an article about a charitable society’s financial affairs in so far as the article was published to non-members of that society who did not have an interest in such affairs.
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An appeal against a Master’s refusal to disapply a limitation period was rejected. The Court of Appeal’s different approach to the issue in personal injury claims in Cain v Francis did not affect the approach in defamation claims.
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A libel claim brought by the head of a Sikh group was stayed as non-justiciable as key issues in the claim could not be resolved without reference to Sikh doctrine.
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A libel claim against a publicity agent who had played an active part in passing allegations of racial discrimination against the Claimant made by some of its employees to a national newspaper was struck out as an abuse of process as, once the employees had made a public statement accepting that there was no racial element to any of the alleged incidents, there was nothing to be achieved by way of vindication by continuing the proceedings.
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A libel claim over a posting on a website was struck out as an abuse of process as any damage to the Claimant’s reputation (over and above that caused by her own website postings) was marginal, a reply by the Claimant had been published, and the numbers of publications within the limitation period were very small, such that any damages would be very modest and out of all proportion to the time and money needed to try the issues.
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Summary judgment granted where defence of justification bound to succeed
Reading a short front page article and a longer article in the Sports section of a newspaper on the same subject to which it referred together, the articles were capable of being defamatory in imputing a want of skill on the part of the Claimant tennis player and/or exposing him to ridicule. However, as the Claimant had indisputably lost 54 consecutive professional tennis matches on the international circuit, the defence of justification was bound to succeed and the Defendant was granted summary ...
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