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From:
Jason Neyers
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2006 12:28 PM
To: Goldberg, John
Subject: Re: ODG: Jameel
I
post for Ken Oliphant:
Out
today from the House of Lords: Jameel v Wall Street Journal
Europe [2006] UKHL 44.
Held,
(1) the rule entitling a trading corporation to sue in libel when
it can prove no financial loss is not an unreasonable restraint
on the right to publish protected by article 10 ECHR and did not,
for that or any other reason, have to be revised. Baroness Hale
(dissenting on this issue) would have amended the law to require
the company to show that the libel was "likely to cause it
financial loss".
(2)
the "Reynolds" qualified privilege applying to
newspaper reports of matters of public interest (or "the Reynolds
public interest defence": at [46] per Lord Hoffmann) should
not be withheld simply because the newspaper failed to delay publication
of its allegation to enable the claimant to comment. (The paper
had reported that the claimant "could not be reached for comment".)
I've
only had time for a skim read, so no guarantees I've got everything
correct!
One
thing that struck me, though, is that the HL has yet again decided
a human rights case with absolutely no mention of the argument that
the Convention rights have horizontal effect attributable to the
court's duty as a public body to act compatibly with those rights
(HRA s 6(1) and (3)). Does anyone else find this as puzzling as
I do?
