Counsel had wished to open his case to the jury with a reference to the fall of pounds 10m in the plaintiff company’s market capitalisation which occurred because of the defendant’s article complained of. It was said that the fall in the share price was admissible evidence as one indicator of the effect of the article on the goodwill of the company. The Court decided that evidence of the share price movement should be excluded, because no notice had been given that the point was intended to be relied on, and there was to be no evidence as to causation: the jury were simply being asked by to infer causation from the fact of the fall that occurred after the publication.
Held: Rose LJ: ‘With regard to the evidence of share price, I am prepared to accept that this may be relevant to goodwill as well as to special damages, as Lord Williams submits, and that so far as it is relevant to good will rather than special damage, it does not have to be pleaded’.
Judges:
Rose LJ, Hoffmann LJ
Citations:
Unreported, 11 November 1993
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Collins Stewart Ltd and Another v The Financial Times Ltd QBD 20-Oct-2004
The claimants sought damages for defamation. The claimed that the article had caused very substantial losses (andpound;230 million) to them by affecting their market capitalisation value. The defendant sought to strike out that part of the claim. . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Defamation, Damages
Updated: 11 June 2022; Ref: scu.220035