Defamatory words - Words capable of defamatory meaning

Kordowski v Hudson: Queen's Bench Division (Mr Justice Tugendhat): 21 October 2011

The claimant was the proprietor of 'Solicitors from Hell', a website on which he sought to reveal corruption in the legal industry. The defendant was the chief executive of the Law Society. On 21 July 2011, a brief verbal exchange took place between the defendant and F, a distinguished lawyer who maintained his own weblog.

On 22 July, F recorded on his weblog that, during their conversation, the defendant had remarked that the claimant was a criminal. The claimant commenced proceedings for slander against the defendant. He further applied for summary judgment against the defendant, on the grounds that the defendant's defence had no realistic prospect of success.

The defendant's defence was that his comments had been related to the claimant's methods of collecting payment to remove comments from his website, and had been justified in the circumstances. In considering the issue, the court had regard to the overriding objective in CPR Pt 1. Further, the defendant contended that the defendant had not objected to the report of the conversation on F's blog, but had instead repeated it on his own website and hence had not sought to prevent republication of the words complained of. The defendant applied to the court to strike out the claim.

The defendant contended that he had not spoken the words alleged by the claimant or as recorded by F. The issue arose as to the seriousness of the alleged wrong. The defendant submitted that F had expressed on his weblog that, whatever might be thought of the claimant, his website served a need, and that consequently the claimant's reputation had not been materially damaged in the eyes of F, the single publishee.

The court ruled: (1) On the facts, there was a clear conflict of evidence. It was impossible to decide, on the evidence before the court, whether the words spoken by the defendant had been as alleged by F or not (see [26] of the judgment). Given the conflict of evidence, it would not be appropriate to grant the summary relief sought by the claimant (see [26] of the judgment).

(2) Although the allegation of criminality was in principle very serious, in the light of the evidence, the allegation of slander to a single publishee was not of a high order of seriousness. Such a finding would support the applications of both parties, since it would make the court more ready to find summary disposal appropriate, and more ready to consider that a strike out would be appropriate (see [36] of the judgment). Taken on its own, the seriousness of the alleged wrong would not be enough to have deterred the court from a summary judgment (see [37] of the judgment).

(3) It was not the case that any claim for slander based on an allegation that the claimant was a criminal would necessarily be the real and substantial tort which it was required to be (see [42] of the judgment). In the instant case, were it to come to trial, there would be issues to be resolved regarding the plea of justification, which would not be short matters to try. In the circumstances, the fact that the words complained of had been spoken to a single publishee, and the fact that there was no evidence of any real or substantial harm to the claimant, led to the conclusion that the instant proceedings were an abuse of the process of the court (see [42], [43] of the judgment).

It would be unjust within the definition of CPR Pt 1 to allow the case to proceed further, and allotting to the case the resources of the court that would be required would not be appropriate (see [44] of the judgment).

Jonathan Crystal (Pro Bono) for the claimant; Hugh Tomlinson QC (instructed by Brett Wilson) for the defendant.