The plaintiff said that the defendants, publishers of a trade magazine providing inter alia credit references, had slandered it. The defendants appealed against an order requiring it to provide details of others to whom the slander had been published. The parties also disputed the meanings claimed.
Held: Lord Kinnear said: ‘The law is perfectly well settled. Before a question of libel or slander is submitted to a jury the Court must be satisfied that the words complained of are capable of the defamatory meaning ascribed to them. That is a matter of law for the Court. If they are so, and also of a harmless meaning, it is a question of fact for a jury which meaning they did convey in the particular case.’ and ‘In . . applying this doctrine [in Capital and Counties Bank] . . to the practice of Scotland, it is necessary to substitute for the words ‘facts properly in evidence’ the words ‘properly averred on record’. This is because in Scottish practice the question of libel or no libel, so far as it is a question for the Court only, is not left to be raised at the trial, but must be decided at the stage at which the interlocutor now under review [approving issues] has been pronounced.’
Lord Shaw of Dunfermline said: ‘I am of opinion that this innuendo imports into the erroneous entry more than it can reasonably bear. For I think the test in these cases is this:- Is the meaning sought to be attributed to the language alleged to be libellous one which is a reasonable, natural or necessary interpretation of its terms? It is productive, in my humble judgment, of much error and mischief to make the test simply whether some people would put such and such a meaning upon the words, however strained or unlikely that construction may be. . . To permit . . a strained and sinister interpretation, which is thus essentially unjust, to form a ground for reparation, would be, in truth, to grant reparation for a wrong which had never been committed.’
Lord Loreburn LC said that the question was one of discretion ‘for it is undoubted that such a discovery can in some cases be allowed’ and ‘This is a case in which a specific libel is alleged – in which the matter that is arrived at by discovery is wholly in the knowledge of the defendants. There is a prima facie case of the publication of the libel complained of by the defendants. A probability, from the nature of the business carried on by the defendants, that the statements would be made or sent to all who asked for them if they were subscribers, is established in fact by the circumstance that the defendants did make the same communication to the plaintiffs’ solicitors when they asked for it. Under these circumstances I think, as I have said, that this is a case in which the discretion used by the Court of Appeal was perfectly sound, and it seems to me that I ought to say so.’
Lord Kinnear, Lord Loreburn, Lord Shaw of Dunfermline
, [1913] UKLawRpAC 13, (1913) AC 386
Commomlii
Scotland
Citing:
Cited – The Capital and Counties Bank Limited v George Henty and Sons HL 1882
The defendant wrote to their customers saying ‘Henty and Sons hereby give notice that they will not receive in payment cheques drawn on any of the branches of the Capital and Counties Bank.’ The contents of the circular became known and there was a . .
Appeal from – Russell v Stubbs Ltd CA 1912
The defendants published ‘Stubbs’ Weekly Gazette’ providing credit reports on persons engaged in trade to their subscribers. The plaintiff pleaded that the defendant had published a report as to the plaintiff’s financial position to a named person . .
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 . .
Distinguished – Barham v Lord Huntingfield CA 1913
The plaintiff pleaded that on a day at the end of 1910 or early in 1911 the defendant published specified defamatory words to Le Grys and further during the years 1910, 1911 and 1912 the defendant published similar words. The slander imputed immoral . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Scotland, Defamation, Litigation Practice
Updated: 05 December 2021; Ref: scu.236347