Raffaele Mincione v Gedi Gruppo Editoriale SPA
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Griffiths |
| Judgment Date | 22 December 2022 |
| Neutral Citation | [2022] EWHC 3268 (KB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: QB-2020-004499 |
| Court | King's Bench Division |
[2022] EWHC 3268 (KB)
Mr Justice Griffiths
Case No: QB-2020-004499
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
KING'S BENCH DIVISION
MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS LIST
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Lorna Skinner KC and Kirsten Sjøvoll (instructed by Withers LLP) for the Claimant
Aidan Eardley KC and Luke Browne (instructed by Archerfield Partners LLP) for the Defendant
Hearing date: 9 December 2022
Approved Judgment
The Claimant sues the Defendant for libel in respect of four articles and two videos. The Defendant is the publisher of La Repubblica and L'Espresso in Italy, which are also available to certain online readers in England and Wales. The action is focused on England and Wales: Mincione v Gedi Gruppo Editoriale SpA [2022] EWCA Civ 557, [2022] EMLR 19.
The First, Third and Fourth Articles (as I will call them) are in Italian and there are agreed translations. The Second Article is in English; in fact, it is essentially the Defendant's own translation, although not slavishly verbatim, of the First Article.
The two videos are identical although they were carried on different platforms. I will therefore refer to them both as “the Video”. There is an agreed translation of the Video, which has been presented to me both as a transcript and as subtitling on the original Video.
This is a preliminary hearing fixed by order of Nicklin J dated 21 June 2022 to determine:
i) The ordinary and natural meaning of the First, Second, Third and Fourth Articles and the Video (“the Publications”); and
ii) Additional innuendo meanings of the Third and Fourth Articles. The parties have agreed that the determination of the innuendo meaning of the Third and Fourth Articles will be on the basis that the publishees would have known the facts pleaded in support of each innuendo meaning in the Re-Amended Particulars of Claim.
In an exemplary fashion, the parties minimised the issues and the documents required to decide these points within a half day hearing. I am grateful to all those responsible, not limited to Leading Counsel who made succinct and clear oral submissions to me in addition to their helpful skeleton arguments and pleadings.
The parties agree that the meanings conveyed by the Publications are defamatory at common law. The parties also agree that the Publications are not and do not contain expressions of opinion. It is agreed that other matters in dispute are not relevant to the determination of the preliminary issues of meaning.
My task is simply, therefore, to determine meaning.
In accordance with the usual practice, I proceed on the basis of the agreed translations of the First, Third and Fourth Articles and of the Video soundtrack rather than the original Italian language versions. Also in accordance with usual practice, I read the Publications and watched the Video first in order to form my own initial impression, before considering the contentions of the parties about meaning in the pleadings and in the skeleton arguments and other submissions.
The principles to be applied when determining meaning are uncontroversial and were summarised by Nicklin J in Koutsogiannis v Random House Group Ltd [2020] 4 WLR 25, [2019] EWHC 48 (QB) at para 12, approved by the Court of Appeal in Millett v Corbyn [2021] EMLR 19 at para 8.
“i) The governing principle is reasonableness.
ii) The intention of the publisher is irrelevant.
iii) 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. A reader who always adopts a bad meaning where a less serious or non-defamatory meaning is available is not reasonable: s/he is avid for scandal. But always to adopt the less derogatory meaning would also be unreasonable: it would be naïve.
iv) Over-elaborate analysis should be avoided and the court should certainly not take a too literal approach to the task.
v) Consequently, a judge providing written reasons for conclusions on meaning should not fall into the trap of conducting too detailed an analysis of the various passages relied on by the respective parties.
vi) Any meaning that emerges as the produce of some strained, or forced, or utterly unreasonable interpretation should be rejected.
vii) It follows that it is not enough to say that by some person or another the words might be understood in a defamatory sense.
viii) The publication must be read as a whole, and any ‘bane and antidote’ taken together. Sometimes, the context will clothe the words in a more serious defamatory meaning (for example the classic “rogues’ gallery” case). In other cases, the context will weaken (even extinguish altogether) the defamatory meaning that the words would bear if they were read in isolation (e.g. bane and antidote cases).
ix) In order to determine the natural and ordinary meaning of the statement of which the claimant complains, it is necessary to take into account the context in which it appeared and the mode of publication.
x) No evidence, beyond publication complained of, is admissible in determining the natural and ordinary meaning.
xi) The hypothetical reader is taken to be representative of those who would read the publication in question. The court can take judicial notice of facts which are common knowledge, but should beware of reliance on impressionistic assessments of the characteristics of a publication's readership.
xii) 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.
xiii) In determining the single meaning, the court is free to choose the correct meaning; it is not bound by the meanings advanced by the parties (save that it cannot find a meaning that is more injurious than the claimant's pleaded meaning).”
Part of the dispute in this case is about which of the Chase levels of meaning is applicable, following Chase v Newsgroup Newspapers Ltd [2002] EWCA Civ 1772; [2003] EMLR 11. Chase Level 1 means a person is guilty. Chase Level 2 means there are reasonable grounds for suspecting a person is guilty. Chase level 3 means there are grounds for investigating whether a person is guilty. However, “Reflecting the almost infinite capacity for subtle differences in meaning”, Chase levels “are not a straitjacket forcing the court to select one of these prescribed levels of meaning, but they are a helpful shorthand”: per Nicklin J in Brown v Bower [2017] EWHC 2637 (QB); [2017] 4 WLR 197, at para 17. In this case, Claimant contends in some respects for a meaning which is less than Chase 1 (guilt) but more than Chase 2 (reasonable grounds for suspecting). Similarly, in Charman v Orion Publishing Group Ltd [2005] EWHC 2187 (QB), Gray J found that the meaning was “cogent grounds to suspect”, i.e. between Chase level 1 and 2.
In view of the length of the four Articles and of the transcript of the Video, I will not set them out in full; but I will set out the passages particularly identified as defamatory and whose meaning I have to determine. However, I have read those passages in the context of each article as a whole.
The First Article
The First Article is an online article dated 29 September 2020 headlined “Il sacco del Vaticano: “Svuotato anche il conto del Papa””, definitively translated for the purposes of these proceedings as “The plundering of the Vatican: “Even the Pope's account has been emptied””.
The sub-headline is: “The papers of the Holy See investigation. Contracts for mobsters behind the Bambino Gesù hospital. Even 20 million pounds from Francis's private deposit account were taken.”
The Claimant relies on the headline and the first sentence of the sub-headline for defamatory meaning, read with the following passages from the body of the First Article:
1An extraordinary 59-page document raises the curtain on the cesspit of corruption that has overwhelmed the Vatican. All-powerful and rapacious people have masterminded devilish operations to loot the Holy See and even put their hands on Francis's private account, the most protected of the Vatican coffers. This is the merciless picture of the assault on the Vatican finances that emerges from the letter rogatory presented by the pontifical prosecutor's office: the reconstruction of a plundering worth 454 million. The investigation starts from the huge London property scandal around which a crowd of monsignors, brokers, business lawyers move, and in which Pope Bergoglio remains a white spot surrounded by dark souls who have betrayed him. [para 3]
The investigators' summary is shocking. “The Secretariat of State finances the London operation with lines of credit from Credit Suisse and Banca della Svizzera Italiana for 200 million dollars guaranteed by pledging assets held by the Secretariat of State and coming from the donations made to Peter's Pence”. That is, the funds for alms, which were put at the service of speculation for as yet undefined amounts, “which may reach up to 454 million euros”. [para 4]
From investments to blackmail
The goal of the investment is to purchase the building that used to house the Harrods headquarters in Sloane Avenue. But the value of the building rose miraculously. “Prior to the subscription of the shares by the Secretariat of State, a substantial accounting revaluation was carried out by the managers of the fund, one which, at the current state of the investigations, does not seem to have a valid financial reason,” wrote Vatican Promoter of Justice...
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Raffaele Mincione v Gedi Gruppo Editoriale SpA
...Following a trial of preliminary issues on 9 December 2022, Griffiths J handed down judgment on 22 December 2022 (neutral citation: [2022] EWHC 3268 (KB)) (“the Meaning Judgment”) in which he set out his determination of the ordinary and natural meaning of each of the Publications and, whe......