The defendant charged the plaintiff with improperly spending andpound;50,000 on over-printing on local authority stationery the message ‘Support Nuclear Free Zones’.
Held: An attempt to plead as justification that the plaintiff had squandered public funds in a number of other unrelated matters was struck out: ‘The clear impression which I have formed of these words. . . is that the ordinary man envisaged by Lord Reid [in Lewis] would regard the defamatory charge in the words used, if there was any, as limited to the spending of stated sums on the stated project.’
Judges:
Ralph Gibson LJ
Citations:
[1989] 1 WLR 640
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Lewis v Daily Telegraph Ltd HL 1964
Ascertaining Meaning of Words for Defamation
The Daily Telegraph had published an article headed ‘Inquiry on Firm by City Police’ and the Daily Mail had published an article headed ‘Fraud Squad Probe Firm’. The plaintiffs claimed that those articles carried the meaning that they were guilty of . .
Cited by:
Cited – Loveless v Earl; Capital and Counties (Financial Services) Limited CA 4-Nov-1998
When a defendant claimed qualified privilege and the Plaintiff alleged that the words complained of were issued with malice, the defendant will not prevented from reliance on qualified privilege if it can show that the words have an honestly . .
Cited – Lowe v Associated Newspapers Ltd QBD 28-Feb-2006
The defendant sought to defend the claim for defamation by claiming fair comment. The claimant said that the relevant facts were not known to the defendant at the time of the publication.
Held: To claim facts in aid of a defence of fair . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Defamation
Updated: 03 July 2022; Ref: scu.194332