Cairns v Modi (Permission to appeal hearing)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Justice Laws,Lord Justice Rix |
| Judgment Date | 28 June 2012 |
| Neutral Citation | [2012] EWCA Civ 1156 |
| Docket Number | Case No: A2/2012/0878Y |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 28 June 2012 |
[2012] EWCA Civ 1156
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
(MR JUSTICE BEAN)
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Lord Justice Laws
and
Lord Justice Rix
Case No: A2/2012/0878Y
Mr Hugh Tomlinson QC and Mr Jonathan Price (instructed by Fladgate LLP) appeared on behalf of the Applicant.
Mr Andrew Caldecott QC and Mr Ian Helme (instructed by Collyer Bristow LLP) appeared on behalf of the Respondent.
(As Approved by the Court
This is an adjourned application for permission to appeal against a decision of Bean J, in a judgment of 26 March 2012 in a libel action brought by the respondent, to the effect that the applicant/defendant in the action had failed to establish his defence of justification. Bean J awarded £90,000 damages to the respondent including £15,000 aggravated damages, and entered judgment accordingly for that sum and an injunction. He himself gave permission to appeal against his award of damages but refused permission in relation to liability.
The applicant applied for permission to this court and on 1 May 2012 Maurice Kay LJ adjourned the application to be restored on notice. Hence it comes before my Lord and myself this morning.
The respondent is a well-known New Zealand cricketer who has captained his country's team in seven test matches. The applicant was formerly the Chairman and Commissioner of the Indian Premier League and Vice President of the Board of Cricketing Control for India, but he was suspended and then removed from those positions in 2010.
The sting of the libel published by the appellant was that the respondent was guilty of match-fixing. There was a publication on Twitter to 65 people on 5 January 2010 alleging that the respondent had been removed from what was called the IPL option list for match-fixing. A like allegation (in fact an allegation that there were reasonable grounds to suspect match fixing) was made by the applicant, as I understand it the same day, to a journalist from the online cricket magazine Cricinfo, and that was published on the Cricinfo website.
The respondent was hired to be the captain of a team called the Chandigarh Lions in 2007 and 2008 in tournaments organised by the Indian Cricket League ("ICL"). However, he and the Vice-Captain, Dinesh Mongia, were suspended from their positions on 27 October 2008. The applicant's case in the action was that that had been done on grounds of suspected match fixing following a meeting at the Shangri-La Hotel in Delhi where the allegation had been put to the respondent. The respondent's case was that he had been suspended for failing to disclose an injury. The judge accepted that concealing his injury was the reason given to the respondent for his suspension (paragraph 57 of the judgment).
The application for permission to appeal goes entirely to the judge's findings of fact. There are two areas of complaint. First, it is said that the judge's analysis of the respondent's evidence about the reasons for his suspension from the ICL on 27 October 2008 was flawed and he was wrong to accept that evidence. Secondly, it is said that the judge's analysis of the evidence of one of the Indian players for the Chandigarh Lions, Gaurav Gupta, was flawed and he was wrong to reject it.
I turn to the first argument. The essence of it is that the judge's finding, as the applicant says it was, that the true reason for the respondent's dismissal related to his injury (paragraph 57) was strikingly inconsistent with other evidence: with his finding that Mr Mongia was suspended from match-fixing and with the unchallenged evidence of Mr Andrew, which was not mentioned by the judge. There was, it is said, no credible evidence why the ICL Executive should rely on the respondent's injury as a true reason for his suspension, but on a supposed failure to disclose this as cover for the true reason in relation to Mr Mongia....
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