Media intervene in Supreme Court case to help define fair comment
Associated Newspapers, the Guardian and the Times granted a rare intervention in the Supreme Court's first libel case, Spiller vs. Joseph
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Papers detailing a rare intervention granted to the media in relation to a libel court case have been served.
Associated Newspapers, the Guardian and the Times were all granted permission to intervene in assisting the court to clarify the defence of 'fair comment' in the case of Spiller v Joseph.
Due to take place from 26 to 27 July, it is the first libel case to be heard by the Supreme Court, after an appeal was launched following its hearing in the Court of Appeal
The written 'Case for the Interveners' has now been released and consists of 37 pages and a six page appendix.
The parties will also give oral submissions during an allotted hour in the court case.
A spokesperson for the International Forum for Responsible Media (Inforrm) Blog , told Journalism.co.uk interventions by private parties are "extremely rare".
"This is the first time, as far as we are aware, that private parties have been permitted to intervene in purely private litigation," says Inforrm's blog post. "It will be interesting to see whether and to what extent the Supreme Court addresses the issues of general principle which the media have sought to raise and allows itself to be drawn into a general exercise of clarification of the 'fair comment' defence." Reporting on the new document's contents , Inforrm outlines the six principles proposed for the defence:
- To qualify as "honest opinion" a statement must be recognisable in its context as opinion. A statement of opinion may in context be an inference of fact drawn by the commentator from facts stated or indicated by him.
- The opinion will qualify for protection if any person, however prejudiced, exaggerated or obstinate his views, could have honestly expressed it on the proved facts or on alleged facts protected by privilege.
- The opinion must be on a matter of public interest.
- The defendant may rely on any proved facts or privileged material in existence at the time of publication, provided those facts relate to the subject matter of the comment.
- If the defendant proves sufficient facts to satisfy the objective test then, subject to malice, the defence succeeds irrespective of whether facts referred to in the publication on facts relied on extrinsic to the publication are not proved or are misstated.
- The defence is lost where a claimant proves that the defendant did not act honestly in publishing the opinion complained of.
The former Court of Appeal judgement was appealed by Spiller, who reportedly argued that the facts relied on by the defendant do not have to be referred to or indicated in the article itself, or even known to the defendant.
While the press support this point, they do not agree with his second point of appeal, that the defendant can rely on facts which did not exist when the comment was made.
The case details explain that Joseph, a member of a musical group, issued proceedings for libel after Spiller published a comment on his entertainment booking service website.
His comment was "to the effect that they were no longer accepting bookings for the respondents who had not been professional enough to abide by the terms of their contract."
Spiller's defence of fair comment was originally struck out shortly before the trial.
