Entertainment and Media in UK Law

They can, moreover, sometimes be based on the wrong questions and thus produce irrelevant or unhelpful responses or for some other reason, as in this case, be of no evidential value. Those directions can then be given in advance of the trial (see, for example, the further proceedings in the U K Channel Management case given by Lewison J, [2007] EWHC 2339 (Ch)).

There is no definition in the books as to what is a matter of public interest. All we are given is a list of examples, coupled with the statement that it is for the Judge and not for the jury. Whenever a matter is such as to affect people at large, so that they may be legitimately interested in, or concerned at, what is going on; or what may happen to them or to others; then it is a matter of public interest on which everyone is entitled to make fair comment.

As to the first ground, I do not think the reasonable man—who can also be described as an ordinary sensible man—should be envisaged as reading this article carefully. The relevant impression is that which would be conveyed to an ordinary sensible man (in this case having knowledge of the relevant circumstances) reading the article casually and not expecting a high degree of accuracy.

They seem to me to point to a very reasonable principle that if through no fault of his own a person gets mixed up in the tortious acts of others so as to facilitate their wrong-doing he may incur no personal liability but he comes under a duty to assist the person who has been wronged by giving him full information and disclosing the identity of the wrongdoers.

Compulsion is an invasion of a private right to keep one's documents to oneself. The public interest in privacy and confidence demands that this compulsion should not be pressed further than the course of justice requires. In order to encourage openness and fairness, the public interest requires that documents disclosed on discovery are not to be made use of except for the purposes of the action in which they are disclosed.

The authorities cited above clearly establish that a trading corporation is entitled to sue in respect of defamatory matters which can be seen as having a tendency to damage it in the way of its business. Examples are those that go to credit such as might deter banks from lending to it, or to the conditions experienced by its employees, which might impede the recruitment of the best qualified workers, or make people reluctant to deal with it.

Discovery constitutes a very serious invasion of the privacy and confidentiality of a litigant's affairs. It forms part of English legal procedure because the public interest in securing that justice is done between parties is considered to outweigh the private and public interest in the maintenance of confidentiality.