Cases

Thornton v Telegraph Media Group Ltd (No 2)

Held

Granting summary judgment in favour of D on the copy approval allegation: The relevant words, whether read on their own or in context, were not capable of being a personal libel in the sense of imputing any reprehensible conduct, or of defaming C in her profession. Although words could be defamatory of a professional person even if they did not impute any moral fault or defect of character (Drummond-Jackson v British Medical Association [1970] 1 All ER 1094) C was not selling her services, and there was no attack on her technique in the Drummond-Jackson sense, so there could be no adverse consequences for readers of the kind that there would be in the case of a dentist said to practise a dangerous technique. Since professional writers were free to write to different standards for different readerships, it could not be defamatory of C to say that she did not apply in her book the standards of journalists relating to copy approval.Alternatively, if the Judge was wrong about this, the defamatory meaning borne by the words fell below the threshold of seriousness required by Sim v Stretch [1936] TLR 669, see per Lord Atkin at 672.

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