| DEFAMATION — Privilege — Qualified — Newspaper article containing report of parliamentary proceedings alongside other extraneous material — Whether parts of article protected by qualified privilege as being "fair and accurate" report of parliamentary proceedings — Whether privilege lost by inclusion of other material — Whether article as whole to be considered in determining meaning — Whether repetition rule to be disapplied — Defamation Act 1996 (c 31), s 15(1), Sch 1
Curistan v Times Newspapers Ltd [2008] EWCA Civ 432; [2008] WLR (D) 135
CA: Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers CJ, Laws and Arden LJJ: 30 April 2008
The qualified privilege which attached to a "fair and accurate" report of parliamentary proceedings was not necessarily lost because of the addition of extraneous non-privileged material in the same article. Where an article consisted in part only of passages entitled to such privilege, the meaning of the non-privileged passages was to be ascertained on the basis that the privileged passages merely provided the context in which the other statements were made, and the repetition rule, under which for the purpose of libel law a hearsay statement was the same as a direct statement, had no application to the privileged passages.
The Court of Appeal so held in dismissing an appeal by the claimant, Peter Curistan, and allowing a cross-appeal by the defendant, Times Newspapers Ltd, against the decision of Gray J in the Queen’s Bench Division on 25 April 2007 [2008] 1 WLR 126 on the trial of preliminary issues in a libel claim.
The defendant published a newspaper article reporting that a Member of Parliament had alleged in Parliament that the claimant had laundered money for the IRA. The article also reported that in response to those allegations the claimant had made a false claim that the accounts of his company had never been qualified by auditors. On the trial of preliminary issues Gray J held (1) that, when ascertaining the natural and ordinary meaning of a newspaper article where part but not all of the article was protected by privilege, the court should consider the article as a whole and that, in the circumstances, the natural and ordinary meaning of the article was that the claimant through his companies was associated with IRA "dirty money" and was thereby guilty of IRA money-laundering and financial malpractice; and (2) that when considering whether the qualified privilege, which by s 15(1) of and Sch 1 to the Defamation Act 1996 attached to a fair and accurate report of parliamentary proceedings, was lost because of the addition of extraneous non-privileged material in the same article, the court had to decide whether the extraneous material had the effect of rendering the article as a whole substantially lacking in the qualities of fairness and accuracy on which the privilege depended and that, in the circumstances, the passages for which the defendant claimed such qualified privilege were so protected.
ARDEN LJ said that one of the requirements of a fair and accurate report was that the quality of fairness must not be lost by intermingling extraneous material with the material for which privilege was claimed. The maker of a report would be liable in defamation for allegations entitled to reporting privilege if he adopted them as his own. The judge correctly applied those principles to the privileged passages and correctly concluded that they were entitled to qualified privilege. In the case of an article consisting in part only of passages entitled to reporting privilege, the meaning of the non-privileged passages was to be ascertained on the basis that the privileged passages merely provided the context in which the statements in the non-privileged passages were made, and the repetition rule, under which for the purpose of libel law a hearsay statement was the same as a direct statement, had no application to the privileged passages. The meaning of the defendant’s article was that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that the claimant had been associated with IRA dirty money and involved in financial malpractice rather than that he was in fact guilty of such conduct. The defence pleaded such a meaning. Accordingly, the claimant’s appeal should be dismissed and the defendant’s cross-appeal should be allowed.
LORD PHILLIPS CJ and LAWS J gave concurring judgments.
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