Lockhart v Harrison
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Phillimore,Viscount Dunedin,Lord Buckmaster,. |
| Judgment Date | 25 July 1928 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1928] UKHL J0725-2 |
| Date | 25 July 1928 |
| Court | House of Lords |
[1928] UKHL J0725-2
Lord Buckmaster.
Viscount Dunedin.
Lord Phillimore.
House of Lords
After hearing Counsel, as well on Thursday the 21st, as on Monday the 25th, days of June last, upon the Petition and Appeal of Henry Fleming Lockhart, of House Lockhart, Hexham, in the County of Northumberland, praying, That the matter of the Order set forth in the Schedule thereto, namely, an Order of His Majesty's Court of Appeal, of the 24th of November, 1927, might be reviewed before His Majesty the King, in His Court of Parliament, and that the said Order might be reversed, varied, or altered, or that the Petitioner might have such other relief in the premises as to His Majesty the King, in His Court of Parliament, might seem meet; as also upon the printed Case of Thomas Harrison, lodged in answer to the said Appeal; and due consideration had this day of what was offered on either side in this Cause:
It is Ordered and Adjudged, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in the Court of Parliament of His Majesty the King assembled, That the said Order of His Majesty's Court of Appeal, of the 24th day of November, 1927, complained of in the said Appeal, be, and the same is hereby, Affirmed, and that the said Petition and Appeal be, and the same is hereby, dismissed this House: And it is further Ordered, That the Appellant do pay, or cause to be paid, to the said Respondent the Costs incurred by him in respect of the said Appeal, the amount thereof to be certified by the Clerk of the Parliaments.
My Lords,
When an action for libel is brought to trial, the written or printed words may be so plainly and necessarily defamatory, that the Judge should instruct the Jury that they are calculated to bring the Plaintiff into hatred or contempt, and should forthwith proceed to direct their attention to the question of damages. This is well laid down in Odgers on Libel at Pages 119 & 121 of the 5th Ed., though the case which he relies upon as his principal authority is not a very satisfactory one.
Where a Judge does so direct a Jury, if the Jury should find a verdict contrary to his direction, it may be deemed perverse, and may be set aside, and a new trial may be ordered.
But in the case now pending before your Lordships, the Judge did not give such a direction. I quote from his summing up:—
"Therefore, as I say, the only question remaining for your determination, and it is one which is eminently and entirely for you, is what meaning is to be attached to this letter of which the Plaintiff complains. In other words would an ordinary person reading that letter infer that the Plaintiff had done something which was not to his credit, and would anybody who read that and believed what was there have felt of the Plaintiff less esteem, respect or regard than he otherwise would?"
In my opinion the Judge was right. The letter to the newspaper which was the vehicle of the alleged libel was ungenerous and mean, and none the better for being anonymous. Its purport was to take away from the Plaintiff and his brother a meed of praise which a previous article in the same newspaper had bestowed upon them. But if carefully and critically analysed, it did not assert, and might be considered not to convey, the impression that the Plaintiff had claimed this praise for himself, or had complacently acquiesced in its bestowal by others.
The Jury, it is true, might have well said to themselves, that considering the hasty way in which ephemeral productions of this kind are read, and the slight and possibly inaccurate recollection that a reader would have of the previous article, the reader might be led to suppose that the Plaintiff and his brother were posing as public benefactors, and might be led therefore to think poorly of them; and if the Jury had taken this view and had found a verdict for the Plaintiff with temperate damages, I should have been well content. But I could not say that the letter necessarily conveys this view.
Again, there are three statements in the letter which are not true. I do not say untruthful, but not true. And the result of these is to assert or imply that the Plaintiff and his brother being Governors of Hexham Grammar School, were getting full price for some land which they were conveying to the School. This is going very near the wind; and again I should have been content if the Jury on account of these words had found a verdict for the Plaintiff. But I cannot say that they of necessity would bring the Plaintiff into hatred or contempt. A man is entitled to make the best of his property. There are people who think that business and charity, or business and public spirit should be kept apart; and if this view commended itself to the members of the Jury, they were the constitutional tribunal to give expression to it.
I agree with Atkin L.J. in his judgment in the Court of Appeal, when he sets out certain hypothetical language and proceeds as follows:—
"If that language had been expressly used and the jury found that was not defamatory, I apprehend no Court would fail to come to the conclusion that such a verdict was perverse and could not stand, with the result that the case would have to be submitted to another jury."
But I do not follow many of the observations which he and the other members of the Court made with regard to the particular language of the letter which is complained of.
Concluding as I do, that the words were not of necessity defamatory, I think that the verdict must stand, and that the judgment of the Court of Appeal was right, and should be affirmed.
My Lords,
This is essentially a case of procedure in an English action, and in such a case I should be slow indeed to differ from those of your Lordships who have had the experience of the Courts. At the same time I regret the result at which you have arrived. I regret it because I think the letter in question was the mean letter of a coward who, shielding himself under anonymity, wished to wound while he was afraid to strike. That it was a libel has been the opinion of every Judge who has had the case before him; but, of course, that is not the question. The question is whether it is a verdict at which 12 reasonable men could possibly have arrived. Now I am glad to note in the opinion just delivered by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack that he does not take the view that the verdict of a jury for the Defendant in a libel case is absolutely sacrosanct....
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