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Intention discounted
19/06/2007 The Star By BHAG SINGH
When a published statement damages a person’s reputation, it does not matter
what the intention of the writer is.
DAILY, much is written by different people in the course of doing their work
as well as in dealings between two or more persons. It may be a journalist
writing an article in a magazine or newspaper, or a person writing a report
to submit to his superiors, or some other person who has requested for it.
On other occasions, a person may express himself in writing to make known
his views on a particular subject which he feels strongly about.
What is written may upset the person referred to or who perceives himself as
referred to. When this happens, the person may feel offended and demand an
apology. However, the person who wrote the said piece may have had no
intention to offend.
A reader asks if this gives the person offended the right to take legal
action.
Anyone can file an action in court as long as he prepares the necessary
documents in the required form and pays the filing fees. Whether he succeeds
or not depends on whether he can establish a cause of action in law.
Merely being offended does not constitute a cause of action. Some people get
offended easily. Others are more tolerant and may choose to ignore an
offensive statement as not warranting any response from them at all. In
order to constitute a cause of action in law, what is offensive or felt to
be offensive must be defamatory or constitute what is referred to as a
malicious falsehood.
What if the person who wrote or published the offensive matter had no
intention to damage the other person’s reputation? There are many situations
whereby the publisher of a statement had no intention to defame another.
Nevertheless, a person may claim to have been defamed because of what was
published.
This can occur because the person who published the statement may not be
aware of facts by reason of which friends or acquaintances or others who
know the aggrieved person draw defamatory inferences from them about the
aggrieved person.
The law places great importance on the message that the words convey, rather
than the intent of the writer or what the writer understood them to convey.
This is expressed clearly in the judgment of Farewell LJ in the case of E.
Hulton and Co vs Jones, where it was stated:
“The rule is well settled that the true intention of the writer of any
document, whether it be contract, will, or libel, is that which is apparent
from the natural and ordinary interpretation of the written words; and this,
when applied to the description of an individual, means the interpretation
that would be reasonably put upon those words by persons who know the
plaintiff and the circumstances.”
Thus the conclusion to be drawn has to be based on, or derived from, the use
of the word “meant”. The use of the word “means” refers not to what the
writer or the publisher has in mind, but to what is meant by the words
employed.
There are instances when the person to whom defamatory content is
communicated may not even believe what has been published. In such
circumstances, is it a basis to contend that the publication is not
defamatory?
The answer to such a contention would be that whilst it may be so, there may
be others whose reaction may not necessarily be the same, by reason of the
fact, situation and the circumstances of the communication. In such a case,
it would not be possible to take the view that the publication is not
defamatory.
The legal position is that disbelief of defamatory content by the recipient
does not by the mere fact take it out of the category of defamation. This
state of the Law was stated in Morgan v. Odhams Press Ltd whereby Lord
Morris of Borth-y-Gest cited with approval a statement by Goddard LJ in
Hough v. London Express Newspaper Ltd as follows:
”If words are used which impute discreditable conduct to my friend, he has
been defamed to me, although I do not believe the imputation, and may even
know that it is untrue.” |
