Cairns v Modi
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales |
| Judgment Date | 31 October 2012 |
| Neutral Citation | [2012] EWCA Civ 1382 |
| Docket Number | Case Nos: A2/2012/0767 & A2/2012/0878 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 31 October 2012 |
[2012] EWCA Civ 1382
The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales
Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury
and
Mr Justice Eady
Case Nos: A2/2012/0767 & A2/2012/0878
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE BEAN
[2012] EWHC 483 (QB) & [2012] EWHC 756 (QB)
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Andrew Caldecott QC and Ian Helme (instructed by Collyer Bristow) for Mr Cairns
Hugh Tomlinson QC and Jonathan Price (instructed by Fladgate LLP) for Mr Modi
James Dingemans QC and Julien Foster (instructed by YVA Solicitors) for KC
Desmond Browne QC (instructed by MGN Legal Department) for MGN Ltd
Hearing dates: 26 & 27 July 2012
1. We have all contributed to the judgment of the court.
Introduction
2. These conjoined hearings concern the amount of compensation awarded by Bean J in libel proceedings, but their facts could hardly be more different. Cairns v Modi involved a sustained attack on the professional reputation of a world-famous cricketer. The award came at the conclusion of a hotly contested trial in which the defendant maintained a plea of justification down to the moment of judgment, and caused even more aggravation to the claimant's feelings by the way the trial was conducted and by the additional adverse publicity generated. The Judge granted the defendant permission to appeal the award of £90,000. By contrast, KC v MGN Ltd involved a most unfortunate blunder by a newspaper which led to a false accusation that a man of good character had been convicted in the 1970s of raping a 14 year old girl. Fortunately he was, and remains anonymous, and after an early apology, the allegation was quickly withdrawn. The issue before the judge was the level of compensation to be awarded under s.3 of the Defamation Act 1996 following the newspaper's acknowledgment of error and offer of amends under the statutory regime. We granted the newspaper leave to appeal the award of £75,000.
3. We turn to the detail of the contrasting factual backgrounds of the appeals.
4. Mr Chris Cairns is a well known international cricketer who represented New Zealand on many occasions: an outstanding all rounder, he was captain of the national team for seven test matches. At the times material to this appeal, however, he was playing in the Indian Cricket League (“ICL”). Between November 2007 and November 2008 three tournaments were held by the ICL (known as “editions”). For each of those tournaments, Mr Cairns was engaged as captain of a team called the Chandigarh Lions.
5. The defendant in the claim, and now the appellant, is Mr Lalit Modi. He too is well known in the world of cricket. He was the Chairman and Commissioner of the Indian Premier League (“IPL”) and Vice-President of the Board of Cricketing Control for India (“BCCI”) and thus a man whose opinions were likely to be taken as being authoritative.
6. On 6 January 2010, Mr Modi published a message on the Twitter website with reference to Mr Cairns' period of playing in the ICL:
“Chris Cairns removed from the IPL auction list due to his past record in match fixing. This was done by the Governing Council today.”
That very day, Mr Modi was contacted by the cricketing website Cricinfo seeking confirmation of his Twitter message. He responded in these terms:
“We have removed him from the list for alleged allegations as we have zero tolerance for this kind of stuff. The Governing Council has decided against keeping him on the list.”
7. In consequence, an article was published on Cricinfo headed There is No Place in the IPL for Chris Cairns, repeating Mr Modi's allegation. Mr Cairns sued for libel in respect of both the Twitter message and the Cricinfo article. He was able to reach early terms of settlement with Cricinfo, resulting in payment of £7,000 in damages and approximately £8,000 in legal costs. By contrast, Mr Modi took the case to trial on a plea of justification. The reserved judgment of Bean J was handed down on 26 March 2012.
8. Bean J announced at paras [137]-[138] that he had awarded a sum of £15,000 specifically to reflect one aspect of aggravation; namely, the conduct of Mr Modi's former counsel in the conduct of the trial. This was added to the sum of £75,000 awarded in respect of all the other matters to be taken into account, resulting in a total of £90,000 damages.
9. A renewed application for permission to appeal on liability was rejected on 28 June by Laws and Rix LJJ. The present appeal by Mr Modi was thus confined to the issue of damages.
10. The appellant, MGN Ltd, is the publisher of The People newspaper. It was sued for libel by the respondent, who is the father of the child known as “Baby P”. As is notorious, this child died in August 2007, just over a year after KC had separated from his mother. Later, she and two men were convicted of causing or permitting his death. As we have already noted, KC is a man of good character and was not in any way responsible for the ill treatment of his son or for the circumstances leading to his death.
11. It was originally as a result of an order made in the Family Division of the High Court, by Coleridge J on 12 November 2008, that restrictions were imposed for the protection of four other children. They included a prohibition on the publication of KC's name, address or photograph. Those restrictions were imposed also in relation to the present proceedings by Bean J and remain operative to this day – again for the protection of the children (not KC himself). They explain why, unusually, these libel proceedings have been brought on an anonymised basis.
12. It was on 19 September 2010 that a supplement was published to accompany the print edition of The People of that date entitled Evil Women. The supplement included an article about Baby P's mother, but it did not name or identify KC and the words complained of were never accessible online. The article contained the following allegations:
“At just 16 [she] met the father of Peter – 17 years her senior – and the two were married in Haringey Civic Centre. Her new husband was a sex offender … Peter's real father had also reappeared and had begun to make frequent visits – something that would have set off alarm bells at Social Services as he had been convicted in the 1970s in Leicester for raping a 14 year old girl.”
There is no doubt that these statements, as published in relation to KC, were completely untrue. It was said on behalf of the appellant that they were made as a result of a blunder. It was Baby P's maternal grandfather, not KC, who had committed the offence mentioned in the article.
13. Solicitors on behalf of KC wrote on 23 September 2010 complaining of what were plainly very serious allegations. They sought a retraction, an apology and damages for libel. The letter was promptly acknowledged and it was said that the matter would be looked into, and no further publication took place. A chasing letter was sent on 5 October 2010, seeking confirmation that nothing further would be published about KC in any of the MGN Ltd's publications. A telephone conversation took place on 7 October between Ms James, a lawyer acting on behalf of MGN Ltd, and the solicitor for KC. She followed up the telephone call with a letter to his solicitors. Both of these communications were on a “without prejudice save as to costs” basis. It seems that for some time after these communications the solicitors were preoccupied with care proceedings in relation to the other children and that this was the reason why they did not respond until a letter dated 10 November 2010. That period of delay was not in any way, therefore, attributable to MGN Ltd.
14. On 12 November, Mr Partington (the Deputy Secretary/Group Legal Director of Trinity Mirror Plc, the parent company of MGN Ltd) wrote to the solicitors, in Ms James' absence, and apologised on behalf of the newspaper for what had been published. He addressed each of their requirements and made an unqualified offer of amends in accordance with s.2 of the Defamation Act 1996.
15. Attempts were made to agree the wording of an apology and, although the parties were unable to reach agreement at that stage, MGN Ltd published the following unilateral apology in the issue of the newspaper dated 21 November 2010 on page 2:
“Apology to Baby P's father
On 19 th September 2010 we published an article in a Crime Special Supplement entitled ‘Tortured to death as mum turned a blind eye’. In that article we claimed that Baby P's father was a ‘sex offender’ and had ‘been convicted in the 1970s in Leicester for raping a 14 year old girl’. We confirm that the allegations are without foundation and that Baby P's father has never been convicted of any criminal offences. We apologise to Baby P's father for making this error and for the very considerable distress and embarrassment our article caused.”
16. There then followed open correspondence between the parties in an attempt to agree an appropriate amount of compensation. MGN Ltd wrote letters on 22 November and 1 December 2010 asking what sum by way of damages was required, having regard to the offer of amends and the published apology. There was no immediate response but, meanwhile, the offer of amends was accepted on 7 December 2010 by KC's solicitors.
17. An open...
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