Cases

Jameel & Another v Wall Street Journal Europe (CA)

Held

(1) In this case, the line between a reasonable ground to suspect meaning and a meaning of grounds merely for investigation was somewhat blurred. The distinction between these levels of meaning is not entirely satisfactory, and, given the height of the hurdle to be cleared if a meaning is to be ruled out, namely that a jury would have to be perverse to accept it, the judge had been wrong to rule out the lesser meaning. (2) GKR Karate v Yorkshire Post established that, since the existence or otherwise of qualified privilege has to be established at the date of publication, whether the words complained of were in fact true or false is irrelevant to the existence of privilege. Moreover, evidence of falsity cannot be introduced to impeach the reliability of a source. However, in the present case the evidence went to whether the source could have told the journalist what he said he did.

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