Church v MGN Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE TUGENDHAT,Mr Justice Tugendhat |
| Judgment Date | 28 March 2012 |
| Neutral Citation | [2012] EWHC 693 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: HQ11D04687 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 28 March 2012 |
[2012] EWHC 693 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
The Honourable Mr Justice Tugendhat
Case No: HQ11D04687
Mr Sherborne (instructed by Lee & Thompsons) for the Claimant
Mark Warby QC (instructed by Reynolds Porter Chamberlain) for the Defendant
Hearing dates: 15 March 2012
Approved Judgment
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
This libel action has given rise to two related applications made by the Defendant in its Application Notice dated 31 January 2012. The first is for a ruling on the meaning of the words complained of, pursuant to Practice Direction 53 para 4.1. The second is a novel application, made at the same time, that the application for a ruling on meaning be dealt with without a hearing, pursuant to CPR Part 23.8(c). I directed that there be an oral hearing of both matters.
Following submissions in relation to the ruling on meaning I announced my decision in open court that the statement complained of by the Claimant is capable of having the meaning attributed to it by her in her statement of case, and that the statement is capable of being defamatory of her. I said I would give my reasons later. I reserved judgment on the question whether I could or should have dealt with the matter without an oral hearing.
THE RULING ON MEANING
The Claimant is a well known professional singer, song-writer and television presenter. The Defendant is the publisher of The People, a national weekly tabloid newspaper which appears each Sunday and enjoys a very substantial circulation throughout England and Wales.
On page three of the issue of that newspaper dated Sunday 6 November 2011, and on its website, the Defendant published the following words about which the Claimant complains:
"MARRYOKE
Exclusive
Charlotte proposes after pub karaoke session
[1] Charlotte Church has proposed to her boyfriend Jonathan Powell during a boozy pub karaoke night.
[2] The star belted out The Ronnettes' Be My Baby then slumped in a chair next to her man and gave him a huge kiss. She told him: "That was for you because I want you to be my baby. Will you marry me? "
[3] He replied: "Yes but I don't want to be known as Mr Church".
[4] The pair, both 25, then ordered bottles of champagne "one each" and celebrated into the early hours of last Saturday morning at the pub, the Robin Hood in Cardiff.
[5] A friend said: "Jonathan was thrilled and Charlotte was very happy. She was singing I'm Getting Married in the Morning as we helped her to the taxi afterward."
[6] Jonathan, a song-writer yet to find success, first met Charlotte in the pub which her aunt owns.
[7] The couple have been dating for more than a year. She has children Ruby, 4 and Dexter 3, by rugby star Gavin Henson, 29 who she split from in May 2010".
There is a picture of the Claimant singing. But that was taken on a different occasion. It needs to be said at once (although this is irrelevant to anything that I have to decide), that there is no truth in the words complained of. Whoever the couple were who behaved as is described in the words complained of, they were not Charlotte Church or Jonathan Powell. As MGN has since acknowledged, they were performing elsewhere at the time.
Following exchanges of correspondence in accordance with the Pre-Action Protocol on Defamation, on 14 December 2011 the Claimant issued her claim form claiming damages for libel. In accordance with Practice Direction 53 para 2.3 the Particulars of Claim included the following:
"In there natural and/or ordinary inferential meaning the words complained of meant and were understood to mean that the Claimant made an embarrassingly drunken spectacle of herself as she proposed to her boyfriend whilst singing karaoke in the Robin Hood pub in Cardiff in the early hours of Saturday, 29 October 2011".
The Practice Direction 53 at para 4.1 provides:
"At any time the court may decide
1. whether a statement is capable of having any meaning attributed to it in a statement of case;
2. whether the statement is capable of being defamatory of the claimant;
3. whether the statement is capable of bearing any other meaning defamatory of the claimant".
Accordingly in the Application Notice of 31 January 2012 the Defendant asked for a ruling and order as follows:
1. "A ruling that the words complained of by the Claimant are not capable of defaming her in the meaning of which she complains in the Particulars of Claim or any other meaning which she might complain.
2. An order that the claim be dismissed accordingly …
because the Defendant believes that the words complained of are incapable of bearing the alleged or any defamatory meaning about the Claimant… ".
The legal test to be applied on an application of this kind is well established. In deciding what meaning words are capable of bearing for the purposes of a libel action, the court must have in mind the guidance given in Skuse v Granada Television, summarised most recently by Sir Anthony Clarke MR in Jeynes v News Magazines Limited [2008] EWCA Civ 130 at para [14]:
"The legal principles relevant to meaning … may be summarised in this way: (1) The governing principle is reasonableness. (2) The hypothetical reasonable reader is not naïve but he is not unduly suspicious. He can read between the lines. He can read in an implication more readily than a lawyer and may indulge in a certain amount of loose thinking but he must be treated as being a man who is not avid for scandal and someone who does not, and should not, select one bad meaning where other non-defamatory meanings are available. (3) Over-elaborate analysis is best avoided. (4) The intention of the publisher is irrelevant. (5) The article must be read as a whole, and any "bane and antidote" taken together. (6) The hypothetical reader is taken to be representative of those who would read the publication in question. (7) In delimiting the range of permissible defamatory meanings, the court should rule out any meaning which, "can only emerge as the produce of some strained, or forced, or utterly unreasonable interpretation…" …. (8) It follows that "it is not enough to say that by some person or another the words might be understood in a defamatory sense.""
Further, Mr Warby further submits (as is not in dispute) that there is a threshold of seriousness which must be passed before it can be said that words are defamatory. He adopts the formulation of the test of what is defamatory in Thornton v Telegraph Media Group [2010] EMLR 25 at para [95]:
"it substantially affects in an adverse manner the attitude of other people towards him, or has a tendency so to do."
Mr Warby also relies on the passage Dell'Olio v Associated Newspapers Ltd [2011] EWHC 3472 (QB) which reads as follows:
"27. The question is whether the words complained of are capable of substantially affecting (or tending to affect) in an adverse manner the attitude of other people towards this Claimant, whether in the meaning advanced by the Claimant, or in some other meaning.
28. I add the emphasis. The Claimant is very well known to the public, and has been for a number of years. The public position or character of a claimant is relevant to whether words complained of bear a defamatory meaning: Gatley on Libel and Slander 11th ed para 2.4." (emphasis original)
Mr Warby submits that to say of a person that they affectionately made a marriage proposal to their long term partner cannot be defamatory, and the fact that this is said to have been done in public cannot change that. He accepts that there is no doubt that the words complained of suggest that the Claimant was drinking, to the extent that she had to be helped into a taxi. But he submits that that is not defamatory either. She is a well known celebrity and does not claim to be teetotal, or not to like drinking. There is no suggestion in the article that her behaviour was embarrassing to anyone.
Mr Sherborne draws attention to the number of references in the words complained of to drinking. They are in the first paragraph the word "boozy", in the second paragraph the word "slumped", in the fourth paragraph the words "Bottles of Champagne 'one each'", and in the fifth paragraph "she was singing I'm Getting Married in the Morning as we helped her to the taxi afterwards".
He also draws attention to the fact that the words complained of referred to the claimant as a " star". There was no need to say in what activity she was a star, because any reader of The People would already know who she is. The words complained of also include a statement that she and Mr Powell are both aged 25 and that she is the mother of two small children aged 4 and 3 years.
Mr Sherborne submits that in that context, including the invented word "Marryoke", the words complained of suggest that what, in that context would be, if true, the significant act of her asking him to marry her, had been demeaned by her doing so in the circumstances alleged. That is the defamatory sting. Of course, he accepts that it would not be defamatory if all that had been said was that she had made a proposal of marriage, or that she had done that in public.
Whether or not words complained of are defamatory depends on the context in which they appear. In my judgment the words complained of are clearly capable of bearing the meaning attributed to them by the Claimant in her Particulars of Claim. The behaviour described might not be defamatory if attributed to some other people, but to attribute such drunken behaviour to a star such as the Claimant...
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