Courts to Settle upon a single meaning if disputed
The ‘single meaning’ rule adopted in the law of defamation is in one sense highly artificial, given the range of meanings the impugned words sometimes bear. The law of defamation ‘has passed beyond redemption by the courts’. Where in a libel action there is a dispute as to meaning, the adjudicator, whether judge or jury, must settle on a single meaning.
Lord Denning MR said: ‘the right of fair comment is one of the essential elements which go to make up our freedom of speech. We must ever maintain this right intact. It must not be whittled down by legal refinements.’
Diplock LJ said: ‘In the spring of 1964 two short letters appeared in the correspondence columns of the ‘Daily Telegraph’. Written by Mr Herbert, they formed part of a robust though desultory controversy about the prospective use by motor vehicles of a public footpath forming part of Upper Mall in Hammersmith. Neither letter can have taken a literate reader of that newspaper more than 60 seconds to read before passing on to some other, and perhaps more interesting, item. Any unfavourable inference about the plaintiffs’ characters or conduct which he might have drawn from what he read would have been one of first impression. Yet in this court three lords justices and four counsel have spent the best part of three days upon a minute linguistic analysis of every phrase used in each of the letters. If this protracted exercise in logical positivism has resulted in our reaching a conclusion as to the meaning of either letter different from the first impression which we formed on reading it, the conclusion reached is unlikely to reflect the impression of the plaintiffs’ character or conduct which was actually formed by those who read the letters in their morning newspaper in 1964.’
Lord Diplock continued: ‘Libel is concerned with the meaning of words. Everyone outside a court of law recognises that words are imprecise instruments for communicating the thoughts of one man to another.
The same words may be understood by one man in a different meaning from that in which they are understood by another and both meanings may be different from that which the author of the words intended to convey. But the notion that the same words should bear different meanings to different men and that more than one meaning should be ‘right’ conflicts with the whole training of a lawyer. Words are the tools of his trade. He uses them to define legal rights and duties. They do not achieve that purpose unless there can be attributed to them a single meaning as the ‘right’ meaning. And so the argument between lawyers as to the meaning of words starts with the unexpressed major premise that any particular combination of words has one meaning which is not necessarily the same as that intended by him who published them or understood by any of those who read them but is capable of ascertainment as being the ‘right’ meaning by the adjudicator to whom the law confides the responsibility of determining it.
Where, as in the present case, words are published to the millions of readers of a popular newspaper, the chances are that if the words are reasonably capable of being understood as bearing more than one meaning, some readers will have understood them as bearing one of those meanings and some will have understood them as bearing others of those meanings. But none of this matters. What does matter is what the adjudicator at the trial thinks is the one and only meaning that the readers as reasonable men should have collectively understood the words to bear. That is ‘the natural and ordinary meaning’ of words in an action for libel.
Juries, in theory, must be unanimous upon every issue on which they have to adjudicate; and since the damages that they award must depend upon the defamatory meaning that they attribute to the words, they must all agree upon a single meaning as being the ‘right’ meaning. And so the unexpressed major premise, that any particular combination of words can bear but a single ‘natural and ordinary meaning’ which is ‘right,’ survived the transfer from judge to jury of the function of adjudicating upon the meaning of words in civil actions for libel.’
Judges:
Diplock LJ, Lord Denning MR
Citations:
[1968] 2 QB 157, [1968] 1 All ER 497
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Branson v Snowden; Branson v Gtech UK Corporation (a Body Corporate) and Rendine CA 3-Jul-1997
The respective parties had been preparing competing bids for the National Lottery. One (Branson) alleged that the other had offerered a bribe. The other responded that the allegation was a lie, and each sued the other for defamation.
Held: The . .
Cited – Geenty v Channel Four Television Corporation and Jessel CA 13-Jan-1998
The claimant police officer appealed against dismissal of his claim in defamation.
Held: The words were capable of implicating the plaintiff in the neglect, they were also capable of implicating him in the accusation of maltreatment. The claim . .
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 – Bonnick v Morris, The Gleaner Company Ltd and Allen PC 17-Jun-2002
(Jamaica) The appellant sought damages from the respondent journalists in defamation. They had claimed qualified privilege. The words alleged to be defamatory were ambiguous.
Held: The publishers were protected by Reynolds privilege. The court . .
Cited – Charman v Orion Publishing Group Ltd and others QBD 14-Oct-2005
The court decided the issue of what meaning the words complained of would have been understood to bear. The ordinary reader of an article may well not think in legalistic terms such as ‘strong grounds to suspect’ or ‘reasonable grounds to suspect’ . .
Cited – Telnikoff v Matusevitch HL 14-Nov-1991
The court should decide on whether an article is ‘fact or comment’ purely by reference to the article itself, and not taking into account any of the earlier background coverage. It is the obligation of the relevant commentator to make clear that the . .
Cited – Skuse v Granada Television CA 30-Mar-1993
The claimant complained that the defendant had said in a television programme that he had failed to act properly when presenting his expert forensic evidence in court in the trial of the Birmingham Six.
Held: The court should give to the . .
Approved – Charleston and Another v News Group Newspapers Ltd and Another HL 31-Mar-1995
The plaintiffs were actors playing Harold and Madge Bishop in the Australian soap series ‘Neighbours’. They sued on a tabloid newspaper article which showed their faces superimposed on the near-naked bodies of models apparently engaged in sexual . .
Cited – British Chiropractic Association v Dr Simon Singh CA 1-Apr-2010
The defendant appealed against a ruling that the words in an article – ‘This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments’ – were statements of fact, and were not comment.
Cited – Ajinomoto Sweeteners Europe Sas v Asda Stores Ltd QBD 15-Jul-2009
The claimant said that the defendant’s characterisation of its own products as ‘Good for You’ by reference to a description saying that it did not include the claimant’s product as a component, was a malicious falsehood. The defendant sold other . .
Cited – Ajinomoto Sweeteners Europe Sas v Asda Stores Ltd CA 2-Jun-2010
The claimant sold a sweetener ingredient. The defendant shop advertised its own health foods range with the label ‘no hidden nasties’ and in a situation which, the claimant said, suggested that its ingredient was a ‘nasty’, and it claimed under . .
Cited – Spiller and Another v Joseph and Others SC 1-Dec-2010
The defendants had published remarks on its website about the reliability of the claimant. When sued in defamation, they pleaded fair comment, but that was rejected by the Court of Appeal.
Held: The defendants’ appeal succeeded, and the fair . .
Cited – Rothschild v Associated Newspapers Ltd QBD 10-Feb-2012
The claimant said that an article published by the defendant was defamatory. He said that the article implied that in his business associations he had put others at risk to their reputations.
Held: The action failed. The words were indeed . .
Cited – Auladin v Shaikh and Others QBD 5-Feb-2013
The court set out to settle the precise defamatory meanings alleged. Trustees of an Education Centre had appointed a relative of three existing trustees to join them. The claimant chairman resigned, objecting to what he said was poor governence. The . .
Cited – Cooke and Another v MGN Ltd and Another QBD 13-Aug-2014
The claimants made a television programme about the lives of people on benefits. The defendant published an article critical of many, and included a statement ‘Three more homes in the road where residents claim they have been portrayed as scroungers . .
Cited – Hamaizia and Another v The Commissioner of Police for The Metropolis QBD 21-Oct-2014
The two claimants, each convicted of serious offences of false imprisonment and violent assault, complained of a press release issued by the defendant which, they said accused them of involvement in a murder.
Held: The words complained of did . .
Cited – Stocker v Stocker SC 3-Apr-2019
The parties had been married and divorced. Mrs S told M S’s new partner on Facebook that he had tried to strangle her and made other allegations. Mrs S now appealed from a finding that she had defamed him. Lord Kerr restated the approach to meaning . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Defamation
Leading Case
Updated: 29 January 2022; Ref: scu.185962
