Michael Charman v Orion Publishing Group Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | THE HON. MR JUSTICE GRAY,Mr Justice Gray |
| Judgment Date | 14 October 2005 |
| Neutral Citation | [2005] EWHC 2187 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: HQ04X01682 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 14 October 2005 |
[2005] EWHC 2187 (QB)
The Hon. Mr Justice Gray
Case No: HQ04X01682
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
HUGH TOMLINSON QC and LUCY MOORMAN (instructed by Simons Muirhead & Burton) for the Claimant
ADRIENNE PAGE QC and MATTHEW NICKLIN (instructed by Wiggin LLP) for the Defendants
Hearing dates: 05 October 2005
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.
Mr Justice Gray
The issue to be determined
In this libel action the Claimant, Mr Michael Charman, seeks damages for libel in respect of both the hardback and the paperback edition of a book published by the Defendants, who are respectively The Orion Publishing Group Limited, Orion Books Limited and Mr Graeme McLagan. The title of the book is "Bent Coppers".
At a Case Management Conference on 17 June 2005 I ordered that the action be tried by Judge alone and that there should be a trial of a preliminary issue to determine the meaning of the words complained of. This course carries with it the advantage that the parties, once they know what my ruling is, can consider their respective positions. There is also the benefit that the argument on meaning will be determined, as it should be, without the mind of the tribunal being clouded by evidence bearing on the issue of justification, which is of course irrelevant so far as the meaning of the words is concerned.
So it is that I now have to decide whether the book, in either or both of its editions, bears the defamatory meaning for which Mr Charman contends or whether it bears some lesser, and if so what lesser, defamatory meaning. It is not suggested on behalf of the publishers that the book is not defamatory of Mr Charman. It is common ground that it is defamatory of him. The question which I have to decide is in what sense.
I will set out the rival contentions as to meaning. Mr Hugh Tomlinson QC for Mr Charman contends that in both its hardback and paperback editions the book bears the following meaning:
"that [Mr Charman] is a corrupt police officer—a 'bent copper'—who, in return for payments totalling £50,000 to himself and another police officer, DI John Redgrave, abused his position as a police officer and condoned and colluded in the commission of a substantial fraud by a convicted criminal and informant, Geoffrey Brennan".
Miss Adrienne Page QC for the Defendants contends that the book does not bear and indeed is not capable of bearing that meaning. She argues that the book in both its hardback and paperback edition bears the lesser (but still defamatory) meaning
"that there are reasonable grounds to investigate whether [Mr Charman] abused his position as a police officer by colluding with Brennan in the commission of substantial fraud by Geoffrey Brennan from whom he and Redgrave received corrupt payments totalling £50,000".
Miss Page's alternative fallback position is that the book bears the higher meaning that
"there are reasonable grounds to suspect that [Mr Charman] abused his position as a police officer by colluding with Brennan in the commission of substantial fraud by Geoffrey Brennan from whom he and Redgrave received corrupt payments totalling £50,000".
For the sake of completeness I should add that the Defendants assert that the book bears further (and also defamatory) meanings, namely
"that [Mr Charman] was (or there are reasonable grounds to suspect he was) unfit to be a police officer by reason of his conduct in acting in a manner reasonably likely to bring discredit on the reputation of the Met by, without authority, obtaining from Deborah Cahill and viewing a copy of an interview of Detective Sergeant Christopher Smith and took steps to destroy the said copy in order to conceal the fact that he had obtained and viewed it".
Mr Charman's case as to this latter meaning is that it is not one which a reasonable reader would draw from the words complained of as a whole in that context. However, I am not asked to decide the subsidiary issue whether the book does or does not bear that meaning. Each side is of course entitled to make what it can of the account in the book of the Cahill episode in support of its case on the primary dispute about meaning.
The applicable law
There is an abundance of authority, much of it recent, as to the approach which the court should take when determining the meaning of words in a libel action. Each side has cited a number of authorities dealing both with the general principles which are applicable and with the particular problems which arise in the case of publications concerned with police investigations into alleged criminality.
General principles of interpretation
I start with the general principles. The starting point is that, where in a libel action there is a dispute as to meaning, the adjudicator, whether judge or jury, must settle on a single meaning: Slim v. Daily Telegraph [1968] 2 QB 157 per Diplock LJ at 173D/E. There is a degree of artificiality about this, not least in the case of a book where the libellous meaning is spread over many pages. But it is well established that, for pragmatic reasons, the court must determine a single meaning. It is common ground that this is the position.
As to the approach to be taken to the interpretation of the words I can do no better than cite the material passages from the summary of the principles given by Sir Thomas Bingham in Skuse v. Granada [1996] EMLR 278 at 285–287:
"(1) The court should give to the material complained of the natural and ordinary meaning which it would have conveyed to the ordinary reasonable [reader].
(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) While limiting its attention to what the Defendant has actually… written, the court should be cautious of an over elaborate analysis of the material in issue…
(4) The court should not be too literal in its approach…".
Another convenient synthesis of the principles to be applied was provided by Eady J in Gillick v. Brook Advisory Centres cited with approval by the Court of Appeal at [2001] EWCA Civ 1263 at para 7:
"The court should give the [book] the natural and ordinary meaning which it would have conveyed to the ordinary reasonable reader… Hypothetical reasonable readers should not be treated as either naïve 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 themselves in considering what impact it would have made on the hypothetical reasonable reader. The court should certainly not take too literal an approach to its task".
It appears to me to be particularly important where, as here, a judge is providing written reasons for his conclusion as to the meaning to be attributed to the words sued on, that he should not fall into the trap of conducting an over-elaborate analysis of the various passages relied on by the respective protagonists. The parties are entitled to a reasoned judgment but that does not mean that the court should overlook the fact that it is ultimately a question of the meaning which would be put on the words of the book by the ordinary reasonable reader. Such a hypothetical reader is assumed not to be a lawyer. He or she is very unlikely to read the whole book in a single sitting or to compare one passage with another or to focus on particular phrases. The exercise is essentially one of ascertaining the broad impression made on the hypothetical reader by the book taken as a whole.
A feature of the present dispute on meaning is that each side has pointed to different passages in the book which it maintains is supportive of its case as to the degree of seriousness of the libel. That is commonplace and legitimate. It is well established that the tribunal of fact, whether judge or jury, must take the bane and antidote of the publication together: see Chalmers v. Payne (1835) 2 Cr M & R 156 at 159. As Lord Nicholls pointed out in Charleston v. News Group Newspapers [1995] 2 AC 65 at 73–74, there is an artificiality about this approach since, especially in the case of a book, not all readers will read it from cover to cover. It is, however, clear from that and earlier authorities that the publication must be taken as a whole.
One further observation as to the general principles which apply arises out of a submission made by Miss Page that it is not nowadays open to a claimant to rely on a lower meaning than that asserted in his or her statement of case. She contends that Mr Charman's complaint is that the imputation is one of guilt of corruption and nothing less. I do not accept that submission. The Court of Appeal in Slim treated the claimant's pleaded meaning in that case as the high water mark, leaving it open to the claimant to contend for and for the jury to find some lesser meaning at trial. I acknowledge that in Jameel v. Times Newspapers Limited [2004] EMLR 31...
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