Content in UK Law

In Al-Fagih v HH Saudi Research and Marketing (UK) Ltd [2001] EWCA Civ 1634 [2002] EMLR 215 the Court of Appeal, by a majority, found that Reynolds privilege was made out in respect of a report in a newspaper of defamatory allegations made in the course of an ongoing political debate, notwithstanding that the publishers had made no attempt to verify the allegations. The newspaper had not adopted or endorsed these allegations.

In such a case the public interest in learning of the allegation lies in the fact that it is, or may be, true. It is in this situation that the responsible journalist must give consideration to the likelihood that the allegation is true. Reynolds privilege absolves the publisher from the need to justify his defamatory publication, but the privilege will normally only be earned where the publisher has taken reasonable steps to satisfy himself that the allegation is true before he publishes it.

Accordingly, in deciding what was the ambit of an individual's 'private life' in particular circumstances courts need to be on guard against using as a touchstone a test which brings into account considerations which should more properly be considered at the later stage of proportionality. Essentially the touchstone of private life is whether in respect of the disclosed facts the person in question had a reasonable expectation of privacy.

The photographs were taken of Miss Campbell while she was in a public place, as she was in the street outside the premises where she had been receiving therapy. The taking of photographs in a public street must, as Randerson J said in Hosking v Runting [2003] 3 NZLR 385, 415, para 138, be taken to be one of the ordinary incidents of living in a free community.

Even in the period before the mid-19 th century, when the majority of prosecutions were privately brought, the identification of criminals does not feature in the reported cases as a proper purpose of the bill of discovery. Today, when prosecution, subject to rare exceptions, is the task of the state, I can see no justification for introducing it.

The judge commented that in talking only in terms of giving credit section l4(1) might perhaps be viewed as expressed somewhat restrictively. But he referred to the view of the editor of Lindley & Banks at paragraph 5–52 that the expression should not be construed in a technical or restrictive sense but as describing any transaction of the firm.