On the defence of common interest such as to establish qualified privilege: ‘The defendant cannot create a privilege for himself because of honest belief on his part that the person to whom he made a slanderous communication had an interest or duty in respect of the subject matter of such statement’ and ‘The material part of the cause of action in libel is not the writing, but the publication of the libel’
Judges:
Lord Esher MR
Citations:
[1894] 2 QB 54
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Downtex v Flatley CA 2-Oct-2003
The claimants sought damages for defamation and breach of contract. The claimants had purchased a business from the defendant, which contract included a clause requiring the defendant to say nothing damaging about the business. The defendant . .
Cited – Reynolds v Times Newspapers Ltd and others HL 28-Oct-1999
Fair Coment on Political Activities
The defendant newspaper had published articles wrongly accusing the claimant, the former Prime Minister of Ireland of duplicity. The paper now appealed, saying that it should have had available to it a defence of qualified privilege because of the . .
Cited – Bata v Bata CA 1948
The defendant wrote a circular letter in Zurich libelling the plaintiff, who was chairman of a company in England, but who personally lived in Ontario, Canada. That circular letter was addressed to the deputy manager and managing director of the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Defamation
Updated: 23 March 2022; Ref: scu.186632
