Lord President Clyde discussed the order of consideration of the elements of defamation: ‘The question of the admissibility of an innuendo necessarily arises in Scotland at the relevancy stage. If – as here – the statement complained of is not defamatory in its own terms, it is for the pursuer to aver on record what he says it really means, and to set out in his pleadings any circumstances (leading up to or surrounding the utterance of the statement, or affecting the minds of those to whom it was uttered) which may throw light on its true meaning. What then is the test which the Court must apply in determining the admissibility of an innuendo. It is, I think, necessary to look behind the generality of the question – Can the statement bear the meaning which the pursuer puts upon it? – for there is no end to the ambiguity of words, written and spoken, even when construed in the light of the circumstances in which they were used.’ and ‘The test of admissibility is therefore not whether the statement is capable of construction as an attack upon the pursuer’s character, for that leaves the answer open to a wide range of conjecture. It is whether the statement itself, and the circumstances in which it is alleged to have been made, provide grounds for a reasonable inference that an attack upon the pursuer’s character was intended.’
Citations:
1930 SC 599
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.
Scotland, Defamation
Updated: 14 May 2022; Ref: scu.236349