At common law, the rule in Duke of Brunswick v Harmer (1849) 14 QB 185 established that each individual publication of a libel gives rise to a separate cause of action, subject to its own limitation period; hence, if the same publication is read many years later, that is a new publication giving rise to a new cause of action. It has been abolished in Ireland by section 11 of the Defamation Act, 2009 (also here), which provides:

(1) Subject to subsection (2), a person has one cause of action only in respect of a multiple publication.

(2) A court may grant leave to a person to bring more than one defamation action in respect of a multiple publication where it considers that the interests of justice so require.

(3) In this section “multiple publication” means publication by a person of the same defamatory statement to 2 or more persons (other than the person in respect of whom the statement is made) whether contemporaneously or not.

Moreover section 3 of the Rules of the Superior Courts (Defamation) 2009 (SI No 511 of 2009) provides for procedures relating to applications under section 11, though I am not aware of any caselaw yet on that section. Recent UK libel reform processes have recommended a similar provision (Ministry of Justice: 2009 | 2011). Now, I learn from Judith Townend’s excellent Meeja Law blog that the First Report of the UK’s Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Draft Defamation Bill:

accepts the Draft Bill’s proposal for a Single Publication Rule, which would limit defamation claims to one year following initial digital publication, as long as the contents are substantially the same as the original (the court still has discretion to extend the one-year time-period “whenever it is just to do so”). Additionally, the Committee called for a widening of the clause’s remit, to protect not just the original publisher but anyone who republishes the same material:

The single publication rule should protect anyone who republishes the same material in a similar manner after it has been in the public domain for more than one year. It should be clarified that the simple act of making a paper-based publication available on the internet, or vice versa, does not in itself amount to republishing in a “materially different” manner.

This is a fascinating suggestion, going much further than the existing UK proposals position, but it risks making an already over-elaborate clause even more complex. I much prefer the crisp section 11, which on its face already reaches the issue considered by the UK’s Joint Committee. Their discussions do demonstrate that the issue is not straightforward, and may yet need to be revisited; but, for the time being, I think tha section 11’s lack of embellishment gets the balance about right.

The UK’s Ministry of Justice has announced its long-awaited consultation on the reform of the UK’s libel laws. Much of the territory covered by draft Defamation Bill was covered in Ireland by the Defamation Act, 2009 (also here), though there are some important differences as well. In this post, I want briefly to compare and contrast the UK Bill [the Bill] with the Irish Act [the Act]. To spoil the conclusion (for those of you who won’t read further than this opening paragraph) the Bill is largely in line the Act, and, in this respect, I am reminded of the Irish adage “tosach maith, leath na h-oibre“: a good start is half the work. In the end, that is what the Bill is: a good start.

Similarities
Clause 2 of the Bill provides for a defence of responsible publication on matter of public interest. In many ways, this analagous to the defence of fair and reasonable publication on a matter of public interest contained in section 26 of the Act. But clause 2 is a far less mealy mouthed version of the defence than the unworkably narrow section 26 is: there are fewer hurdles to be jumped by a defendant seeking to rely upon it.

Clause 3 of the Bill provides for a defence of truth (to replace the existing defence of justification), and this is analgous to the defence of truth contained in section 16 of the Act. The Bill requires that the “imputation conveyed by the statement complained of is substantially true” whereas the Act requires that it be true “in all material respects”. Only time – and expensive cases – will tell whether this is a distinction with any real difference.

Clause 4 of the Bill provides for a defence of honest opinion (to replace the existing defence of fair comment), and this is analgous to defence of honest opinion contained in section 20 of the Act. However, the Bill is more objective than the Act – the Act requires that the opinion is honestly held by the defendant, whereas the Bill simply requires that an honest person could have held the opinion. Moreover, as with the public interest defence, the Act places more hurdles in the way of the defence than the Bill does.

Clause 5 of the Bill provides for some technical amendments to the statutory occasions of qualified privilege, which differ in the details from the similar amendments worked by section 18 and Schedule 1 of the Act.

Clause 6 of the Bill replaces the common law multiple publication rule with a single publication rule, analgous to the reform worked by section 11 of the Act. This was already the subject of a consultation in the UK, and is a very welcome proposed reform, but – unlike the situation in respect of the public interest and honest opinion defences – the UK clause is far more elaborate than the Irish section. In this respect, I much prefer the starkness of the defintion in the Act to the over-elaborate technicalities in the Bill.

Differences
The Bill contains only 10 sections, but, for all its brevity, there are three areas in which it goes substantially further than the Act. Read the rest of this entry »

In Watters v Independent Star [2010] IECC 1 (03 November 2010), the first reported judgment on the Defamation Act, 2009 (also here), Matthews J granted the plaintiff a declaratory order pursuant to section 28 of the Act (also here) that an article published by the defendant was defamatory, and he made a further order pursuant to section 33 of the Act (also here) prohibiting the newspaper from re-publishing the defamation.

In an earlier post (also here), I have already looked at some issues arising from this decision. Another critical aspect of Matthew J’s judgment was that, although the plaintiff was a convicted criminal, he nevertheless possessed a residual reputation which was damaged by the newspaper’s allegations. Of course, evidence of a plaintiff’s general bad reputation is admissible in evidence in mitigation of damages (see section 31(4)(g) and section 31(6)(a) of the Act (also here); see also Hill v Cork Examiner Publications [2001] 4 IR 219, [2001] IESC 95 (14 November 2001) and the recent decision of Tugendhat J in Hunt v Evening Standard [2011] EWHC 272 (QB) (18 February 2011)). However, this is a long way from saying that such a general bad reputation renders a plaintiff libel-proof. Moreover, the plaintiff in Watters did not seek damages, but rather sought and obtained a declaratory order and an injunction.

Section 33 of the 2009 Act allows the court to make interim, interlocutory or permanent orders prohibiting the publication or further publication of the defamatory statement in respect of which the application was made, and it was on foot of that section that Matthews J granted a permanent injunction restraining re-publication of the defamation. In my earlier post, I considered its applicability in the context of interim and interlocutory applications; and I argued that, in much the same way as the previous common law had been, section 33 had to be interpreted in the light of the protections of freedom of expression by the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. In particular, since such a temporary injunction constitutes a prior restraint upon speech, applications for interim or interlocutory injunctions in defamation cases must be scrutinised with particular care.

In principle, such considerations derived from the Constitution and the Convention should also be in play when – as in Watters – an application is made under section 33 for a permanent injunction as a remedy for defamation. In the US, it has been argued that a permanent injunction imposed after trial nevertheless amounts to a prior restraint upon any subsequent speech. However, the courts have held that injunctions against certain statements based on a finding on the merits that those particular statements are defamatory effectively do not amount to prior restraints and are therefore not presumptively unconstitutional (see Balboa Island Village Inn v Lemen 156 P 3d 339 (Supreme Court of California, 2007); St James Healthcare v Cole 2008 MT 453 (Supreme Court of Montana, 2008); Hill v Petrotech Resources Corp (Supreme Court of Kentucky, 21 October 2010) (blogged here on the Volokh Conspiracy)). These cases demonstrate the confusing doctrinal consequences of the US rule against prior restraints. A final order prohibiting future publication is indeed a prior restraint upon that future speech; it would be better if the US cases accepted that rather than denying it; but they would then have to go on and hold that the full trial establishing the defamatory nature of the publication overcomes the presumption against prior restraint.

By contrast, the approach to prior restraints in Ireland, influenced by the Convention, is much more nuanced, and it does not run into the same doctrinal problems justifying a section 33 permanent injunction as a remedy after trial in defamation cases. Even if a permanent injunction does indeed constitute a prior restraint upon future speech, and thus a restriction upon the right to freedom of expression protected by the Constitution and the Convention, the question would not be whether the constitutional presumption against prior restraint has been overcome, but whether, after a close and penetrating examination of the facts, the permanent injunction is a necessary and proportionate restriction upon that right. In the circumstances of Watters v Independent Star, this test would almost certainly have been satisfied, but it may nevertheless be worth a future defendant’s while taking the point. However, given the recent demise of the Star on Sunday, it won’t be that defendant.

Some orders have been made on foot of the Defamation Act, 2009 (also here) – see, for example, Lowry v Smyth (background here and here; coverage of the order here), Mellon v Associated Newspapers (coverage here), and Meegan v Associated Newspapers (coverage here) – but Watters v Independent Star [2010] IECC 1 (03 November 2010) remains the only reported judgment on provisions of the Act. In that case, the newspaper had published an article headlined Larry’s Secret Shower Buddy, purporting to expose a a “seedy”, “weird”, “bizarre” and “secretive” homosexual relationship in prison between the plaintiff Barry Watters and Larry Murphy, a notorious criminal who had been convicted of rape and attempted murder. Matthews J held that the plaintiff had a residual reputation which was damaged by the newspaper’s allegations. He therefore granted the plaintiff a declaratory order pursuant to section 28 of the 2009 Act (also here) that the article was defamatory, and he made a further order pursuant to section 33 of the 2009 Act (also here) prohibiting the newspaper from re-publishing the defamation. Nevertheless, the newspaper repeated the defamation: in an article alongside a photograph of Watters the newspaper had stated:

We may have to apologise to this revolting pervert but will we mean it? Hell no.

As a consquence, the newspaper was fined 40,000 euros for contempt of court (can anyone tell me whether this fine was paid before the Irish Daily Star on Sunday is to ceased publication?). Moreover, the judge ordered that a fair summary of the earlier judgment in which he found that the applicant had been defamed be published by the newspaper with equal prominence to the layout of the original defamatory article. The facts are sensationalist, but they raise an important issue of legal principle relating to section 33 of the 2009 Act, which allows the court to make interim, interlocutory or permanent orders prohibiting the publication or further publication of the defamatory statement in respect of which the application was made.

The issue of injunctions in defamation cases is a fraught and controversial one. This is particularly so in the context of interim and interlocutory injunctions. However, as recent US cases have demonstrated, difficult issues can also arise in the context of permanent injunctions to restrain the republication of defamatory comments of the kind sought, awarded and breached in Watters. In this post, I want to look at interim and interlocutory injunctions; and I will return to the question of permanent injunctions in a future post. Read the rest of this entry »

In the UK, the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg (pictured left) has announced significant reforms of Britain’s libel laws, which I consider a very good thing.

During a wide-ranging speech today on civil liberties, he said:

We will be publishing a draft defamation bill in the Spring. We intend to provide a new statutory defence for those speaking out in the public interest, whether they be big broadcasters or the humble blogger. And we intend to clarify the law around the existing defences of fair comment, and justification.

We believe claimants should not be able to threaten claims on what are essentially trivial grounds. We are going to tackle libel tourism. And we’re going to look at how the law can be updated to better reflect the realities of the internet. Separately, we are also going to address the high costs of defamation proceedings. … Our aim is to turn English libel laws from an international laughing stock to an international blueprint.

Welcome though this is, as with many political developments, it is in danger of being overspun or at least oversold. According to yesterday’s Guardian:

Britain will become the first country to ask parliament to set out its libel laws, and provide greater clarity, his officials said.

No so, Mr Clegg, not so. As I have frequently discussed on this blog, Ireland introduced a full-scale reforming Defamation Act in 2009, which came into force on 1 January 2010. Similarly, in Australia, a uniform Defamation Act, 2005 was passed in each of the states and came into force on 1 January 2006. Indeed, New Zealand introduced a comprehensive Defamation Act in 1992, and it came into force on 1 February 1993. Far from being “first”, the UK is coming very late to this particular party. But better late than never!

A little later than promised, here are some thoughts that occurred to me at the recent seminar on Promoting innovation – Reshaping the Law for the Digital Economy (which I blogged here and here). In the same way that browsers have a constant battle between features and speed, so the modern law of copyright is faced with a similar dilemma between encouraging and rewarding innovation. It is becoming increasingly clear that it has not solved this dilemma in a particularly satisfactory way. More than that, the most popular emerging solution – the introduction of a fair use defence to EU law – may not be sufficient for current needs, let alone for future developments.

At the seminar, Johnny Ryan argued that with the rise of the internet, where everything is in perpetual beta, we are in effect are reverting back to the pre-Gutenberg plasticity of information. In historical terms, this is the norm. It is the post-Gutenberg era of fixed information which is the anomaly. Copyright is a feature of this period: in the 1500s, it developed to protect the publishers; in the second half of the 1600s it came under increasing pressure to protect authors, and this was codified in the Statute of Anne, 1710; thereafter, the statutory protections were slowly expanded to other creators of other original works. The fundamental (even if increasingly questioned) justification for this development is that the copyright monopoly encourages the creation of original works.

This development of copyright has been a very slow process, but two current issues are putting significant pressure on this slow pace. The first is the evolution beyond the static to the plastic described by Johnny Ryan; the second is that the rate of this change is exponentially faster than heretofore. Copyright rules rules created for static texts which at best change slowly are rules that are ill-adapted to faster change and inappropriate to the modern reality of plastic texts. Read the rest of this entry »

In Watters v Independent Star [2010] IECC 1 (3 November 2010) Matthews J in the Circuit Court handed down the first reserved decision under the Defamation Act, 2009 (also here). We will soon have the second. The politician Michael Lowry TD (pictured left) has taken a defamation action against journalist Sam Smyth over comments Smyth made in an article in the Irish Independent newspaper last May and on TV3 last June. I’ve already blogged about an earlier procedural skirmish in the case. The full action was heard today. According to the RTÉ news website (with links added by me to the relevant sections of the 2009 Act):

Mr Lowry says that Mr Smyth’s assertions portrayed him as corrupt, dishonest and untrustworthy and both unfit and unsuitable to be a minister or a TD. He said that other people had taken this same meaning from Mr Smyth’s comments. Mr Lowry says the comments were false and as such were deeply offensive and defamatory.

Mr Lowry is seeking that the court make a number of orders including that Mr Smyth apologise, publish a correction and refrain from making such public comments in the future. However, Mr Smyth is arguing that the comments made by him were true and represented his honest opinion. He said that they were fair and reasonable comments on a matter of public interest.

Judgment has been reserved, and is expected early next term.

Update (18 December 2010): From the Irish Times: Journalist says he called TD a tax cheat not a thief

As I said my first post yesterday, last Friday morning I attended a seminar on Promoting innovation – Reshaping the Law for the Digital Economy, hosted by Google Ireland, co-sponsored by the Institute for International and European Affairs (IIEA), and chaired by TJ McIntyre. In that post, I summarized the presentations by Johnny Ryan (the internet has created a hinge in history when information is plastic and copyright law is a block upon total commerce) and Niall O’Riordan (for Google, a fair use doctrine in Ireland and Europe is an idea whose time has come). In this post, I’ll look at last Friday’s other presentations; and in tomorrow’s post, I’ll add a few comments of my own on some of the issues raised by the seminar.

Kate O’Sullivan (Director of Regulation and Public Policy, UPC Ireland) pointed out that intermediaries (such as Google, Facebook, and ISPs) are caught in the middle between content producers seeking to enforce their rights as against users, and it is not appropriate that ISPs should be judge and jury in such a cause. Section 40(3) of the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000 (also here) provides that the mere provision of facilities by an ISP, for example, which enable the making available to the public of copies of a work “shall not of itself constitute an act of making available to the public of copies of the work” and therefore shall not for that reason amount to a copyright infringement.

She examined the main rights of each of the three main involved: rights holders, subscribers, and intermediaries. Read the rest of this entry »