Complaint was made that the plaintiff had been libelled in the defendant’s book review.
Held: A publication is defamatory in nature if it ‘is likely to cause ordinary decent folk in the community, taken in general, to think the less of [the plaintiff]’.
A critic is ‘entitled to dip his pen in gall for the purposes of legitimate criticism.’
The court equated malice with a commentator’s failure to express his ‘real opinion’: ‘To establish malice, it is necessary to produce evidence that the comment was designed to serve some other purpose than that of expressing the commentator’s real opinion, for example, that of satisfying a private grudge against the person attacked.’
Judges:
Jordan CJ
Citations:
(1942) 42 SR (NSW) 171
Jurisdiction:
Australia
Cited by:
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 . .
Cited – Tse Wai Chun Paul v Albert Cheng 13-Nov-2000
(Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong) For the purposes of the defence to defamation of fair comment: ‘The comment must explicitly or implicitly indicate, at least in general terms, what are the facts on which the comment is being made. The reader or . .
Cited – Robins v Kordowski and Another QBD 22-Jul-2011
The claimant solicitor said he had been defamed on the first defendant’s website (‘Solicitors from Hell’) by the second defendant. The first defendant now applied to set aside judgment entered by default. The claimant additionally sought summary . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Defamation
Updated: 09 November 2022; Ref: scu.368290