The court discussed the meaning of slander: ‘It may be that to confine the use of the word slander to cases where the language complained of is obviously and on the face of it defamatory and injurious would be convenient, but I should rather have thought that all actionable words which are either injurious to the character or the credit of the person of whom they are spoken, or which expose the person with reference to whom they are uttered to public hatred and contempt, are defamatory or slanderous words. … If it is not calculated to expose him to public hatred or contempt, or to do him any injury, – if, when properly construed, it does not assail his character or credit, – then it is not slanderous or actionable at all.’
Judges:
Lord Kinnear
Citations:
(1894) 21 R 883
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Mccann v Scottish Media Newspapers Ltd SCS 18-Feb-1999
Three articles which appeared in one edition of a newspaper had to be read together and treated as ‘constituting a whole’ for the purposes of determining meaning, where the first ended with a cross-reference to the second, and the second ended with . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Defamation
Updated: 14 May 2022; Ref: scu.236345