Gillick v Brook Advisory Centres and Another
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE LATHAM,the Master of the Rolls,LORD JUSTICE JONATHAN PARKER |
| Judgment Date | 23 July 2001 |
| Neutral Citation | [2001] EWCA Civ 1263 |
| Docket Number | A2/00/3770 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 23 July 2001 |
1. Brook advisory centres
2. Dr margaret jones
[2001] EWCA Civ 1263
The Master of the Rolls
(Lord phillips)
Lord Justice Latham
Lord Justice Jonathan parker
A2/00/3770
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
(MR JUSTICE EADY)
Royal Courts Of Justice
Strand
London Wc2a 2ll
MRS GILLICK appeared in person.
MR MATTHEW NICKLIN (Instructed by Messrs Bindman & Partners, London, WC1X 8QB) appeared on behalf of the Respondent
LORD PHILLIPS MR: The appellant, Mrs Gillick, alleges that the respondents, The Brook Advisory Clinics and their chief executive, Dr Jones, have libelled her in a leaflet which they have published and distributed since 1996. The leaflet is about teenage pregnancies. It is Mrs Gillick's case that a passage in the leaflet carries the meaning that she was morally responsible for an increase in teenage pregnancies in the 1980s. The respondents contend that the passage in question is not capable of bearing the meaning that Mrs Gillick alleges. They applied to Eady J for a ruling to this effect pursuant to CPR Part 53, PD 4.1. He granted the application and went on to dismiss the action on the ground that there was no other defamatory meaning which the passage was capable of bearing. Mrs Gillick appears before us in person to appeal against that judgment, having been given permission so to do by Mance LJ.
The pleaded claim
The material parts of Mrs Gillick's particulars of claim read as follows:
"2 (1) The First Defendant. has centres open to the general public in a number of cities in England and Scotland where it offers counselling and advice on sexual relationships, contraception, pregnancy and abortion to young women and to children under 16. It supplies contraceptives free of charge to those who consult it. It also publishes Factsheets and other material for use in schools, colleges and youth clubs and for those in the medical and teaching professions and the media.
(2) The Second Defendant is Chief Executive of the First Defendant.
5. In April 1996 the First Defendant began publishing and distributing and the Second Defendant authorised the publishing and distributing of a Factsheet entitled:
'Teenage Conceptions: Statistics and Trends'
The said Factsheet was republished by the Defendants with updated statistics in the Winter of 1998.
Both the 1996 and 1998 editions of the said Factsheet contained the following words which are defamatory of the Claimant:
"Teenage pregnancy the trends over the last 25 years
After the introduction of free contraception on the NHS in 1975, teenage conception rates for the 15–19 age group steadily declined, reaching the lowest recorded figure in 1983. In the 1980s the downward trend was reversed. By 1990 the rate had risen by 23%.
What caused the teenage conception rate to rise in the 1980s
Fears over confidentiality. The legal case taken by Victoria Gillick in the early 1980s confused young people over their rights to confidential advice and deterred many from seeking contraceptive help. Although the case concluded in 1985 in favour of young people's rights, fear and uncertainty lingered on among teenagers and professionals working with them."
A footnote gives a reference to the legal case Mrs Victoria Gillick v West Norfolk & Wisbech Area Health Authority 1985.
The issue raised is whether the words objected to are capable of bearing the defamatory meaning alleged. In a libel action that is a question of law for the judge.
The correct approach.
The Court of Appeal will always be very reluctant to reverse an interlocutory finding of a judge at first instance that the words alleged to be libellous are capable of bearing the defamatory meaning alleged (see Hinduja v Asia TV Limited [1998] EMLR 516, 523 per Hirst LJ and Cruise v Express Newspapers [1999] QB 931, 936 per Brook LJ).
Where the judge has held that words are not capable of bearing a defamatory meaning, with the result that the issue will never go to a jury, the reluctance to intervene will be less marked (see Hirst LJ in Geenty v Channel Four Television [1998] EMLR] 524 at 532).
Eady J produced what, if I may respectfully say so, was an impeccable synthesis of the authorities in this area of the law when directing himself as to the approach he should adopt to the respondents' application. I can do no better than to repeat this:
"The proper role for the judge when adjudicating a question of this kind is to evaluate the words complained of and to delimit the range of meanings of which the words are reasonably capable, exercising his or her own judgment in the light of the principles laid down in the authorities and without any of the former Order 18 Rule 19 overtones. If the judge decides that any pleaded meaning falls outside the permissible range, then it will be his duty to rule accordingly. In deciding whether words are capable of conveying a defamatory meaning, the court should reject those meanings which can only emerge as the produce of some strained or forced or utterly unreasonable interpretation. The purpose of the new rule is to enable the court to fix in advance the ground rules and permissible meanings, which are of cardinal importance in defamation actions, not only for the purpose of assessing the degree of injury to the claimant's reputation but also for the purpose of evaluating any defences raised, in particular, justification and fair comment.
The court should give the article the natural and ordinary meaning which it would have conveyed to the ordinary reasonable reader reading the article once. Hypothetical reasonable readers should not be treated as either naive or unduly suspicious. They should be treated as being capable of reading between the lines and engaging in some loose thinking, but not as being avid for scandal. The court should avoid an over-elaborate analysis of the article, because an ordinary reader would not analyse the article as a lawyer or accountant would analyse documents or accounts. Judges should have regard to the impression the article has made upon them themselves in considering what impact it would have made on the hypothetical reasonable reader. The court should certainly not take a too literal approach to its task."
The nature of the defamatory meaning alleged:
This is not the first occasion on which Mrs Gillick has alleged that words spoken of her were defamatory in that they meant that she was "morally responsible" for certain regrettable consequences.
In 1989 Mrs Gillick took part in a live television programme in which one participant remarked that after she had, in circumstances to which I shall revert, successfully challenged the practice of doctors giving contraceptive advice to girls under 16 without informing their parents, at least two girls who were pregnant were reported to have committed suicide. Mrs Gillick sued the BBC for defamation alleging that this remark meant that she was morally responsible for their suicide. The BBC contended that the words complained of were not capable of carrying this meaning and, on a preliminary issue, succeeded in this plea at first instance.
On appeal this decision was reversed by a majority of the Court of Appeal (Gillick v British Broadcasting Corporation [1996] EMLR 267). In the course of the leading judgment Neill LJ held at page 273:
"It will be for the jury to decide...
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