Cases

Cook v Telegraph Media Group Limited (No 3)

Held

The whole claim must fail: (1) The rules governing the reimbursement of MP's expenses were not necessarily rules or standards which the public would accept as proper. There was no inconsistency in believing that a claim may be justifiable or appropriate under one set of rules while at the same time believing that it was not justifiable under some other rules or standard. What is justifiable legally is not always justifiable morally. It was quite plain that each of the three comments was one which could have been made by an honest person, and which is germane to the subject matter criticised.

(2)The only comment to which the issue of malice was relevant was comment (ii) because that was the comment referred to in the plea of malice.  S was not the author of the comment (ii), and that was a complete answer to the claim of malice.In light of the evidence, C failed to establish that either S or the author of the comment lacked belief in the comment.

(3) Had the newspaper made an application at trial to withdraw the case in malice from the jury, the application would have succeeded. As the action was tried by judge alone, there was little point in an application that would have been made if the trial had been with a jury.  Since the trial had been heard, there was no point in deciding whether the case would have been stuck out had the newspaper's applicaiton been heard before the trial.

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