Cadam v Beaverbrook Newspapers Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE HODSON,LORD JUSTICE MORRIS |
| Judgment Date | 29 January 1959 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1959] EWCA Civ J0129-1 |
| Court | Court of Appeal |
| Date | 29 January 1959 |
[1959] EWCA Civ J0129-1
In The Supreme Court of Judicature
Court of Appeal
Lord Justice Hodson and
Lord Justice Morris.
MR COLIN DUNCAN and MR PAUL SIEGHART (instructed by Messrs Basil Greeriby & Co.) appeared for the Appellants, Applicants below.
MR GERALD GARDINER, Q.C., MR HELENUS MILMO, and MR PETER BRISTOW (instructed by Messrs Oswald Hickson, Collier & Co.) appeared for the Respondents, Respondents below.
This is an interlocutory appeal from an Order of Mr Justice Paull dated the 6th November, 1958. The appeal is in a pending libel action, and on the assumption that the action has to be tried it is obviously undesirable - and indeed it would be wrong - for this Court to express any opinion upon any matters which are not strictly necessary for the determination of the appeal.
The Order appealed from is an Order giving the Defendants to the action. Beaverbrook Newspapers Limited, Leave to amend their Defence by adding a plea of justification supported by a paragraph containing the particulars of justification. The position is that the four Plaintiffs by their Writ are claiming damages for libel in an article which appeared on page 7 of the "Daily Express" of 22nd March, 1957. The gist of that article was that the four Plaintiffs were Defendants in an action upon a Writ claiming damages against them for alleged conspiracy. The article is merely a repetition of the Writ. By their Defence, the Defendants, first of all, said that the words did not bear and were incapable of bearing any meaning defamatory of the Plaintiffs, or any of them. The Defendants had second thoughts, and do not now seek only to rely upon the Defence that the words to which I have referred are incapable of bearing any meaning defamatory of the Plaintiffs, but seek to say in addition that the words are true. It is in this connection that the controversy has arisen.
It is said that leave to amend was rightly refused by the Master before whom the matter first came, because the particulars of justification do not justify any defamatory contents of the libel. To put the matter plainly, the particulars of justification merely say: "On or about 20th March, 1957, one Percy Oakley of Sutton Coldfield, a former company director, caused to be issued on his behalf and subsequently served a Writ claiming against the Plaintiffs herein damages for conspiracy to defraud" - the words "to defraud" were not in the original article but appear on the face of the Writ - "and to deprive the said Oakley wrongfully of his interests and rights in certain limited companies". The Plaintiffs say that those particulars cannot justify a libel on the footing that the words have a defamatory meaning since the Defendants are only saying that they had published defamatory matter which has come from another source.
The principle is: "'Every republication of a libel is a new libel and each publisher is answerable for his act to the same extent as if the calumny had originated with him'. 'It is no defence to such an action that the defendants received the libellous statement from another whose name he disclosed at the time of the publication'". I am reading from the fourth edition of Gatley, page 106. The first sentence is an extract from the judgment of the Court in Moore v. Times-Republican Company. 1904, 124 Iowa Reports, page 717. The justification for the second sentence is given as De Crespigny v. Wellesley, 5. Bingham, page 392, to which we were referred. But, for the reasons indicated at the beginning of my judgment, I do not propose to refer in detail to that case where no question of the administration of justice was concerned, as indeed Chief Justice Best pointed out. The position, therefore, is that if you choose to repeat a calumny you must take the responsibility for so doing, and if the words are not in themselves defamatory the question of justification does not arise. It is only if the words are defamatory of the plaintiffs that the plea of justification arises, and it is said the Defendants have given no support for that by merely stating that what they have said is derived from a Writ.
It is sufficient to say that, although experienced Counsel have been engaged on both sides in this case, so far as the Court knows there is no authority directly in point. The question seems to me to be open to argument whether, on the footing that the words are capable of being defamatory and are found to be defamatory of the Plaintiffs, the defence which is put forward of justification can be supported by a reference to the issue of a Writ. The plea is an alternative plea. There is no embarrassment to the Plaintiffs in the alternative plea standing as it is, although, as Mr Duncan rightly says, in the forefront of this case there will be, as necessarily must be the oase in every libel action, the question whether the words bear or are reasonably capable of bearing a defamatory meaaing, which is primarily for the Judge, though ultimately it may become a question for the jury as to whether the words in fact are defamatory.
I have endeavoured to avoid expressing any view as to what perhaps, on the face of it, may be a somewhat surprising contention on the part of the Plaintiffs that merely setting out the contents...
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