Day 169 - 04 Oct 95 - Page 32


     
     1        why I asked for it to be further back was so that we would
     2        have time to get legal advice because sometimes it is not
     3        easy to get it immediately.
     4
     5   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  All I am asking you to do is to do your very
     6        best to get legal advice on it by the middle of next week.
     7        One way you might go about that is if you read Charleston
     8        and Skuse to yourself and, insofar as both cases are quite
     9        clear, there you are, but insofar as you think that you do
    10        not understand the ramifications of either case, make a
    11        note of that and ask your legal advice in relation to that,
    12        so it is focused rather than just going to some legal
    13        advisor with generalities about it.
    14
    15   MR. MORRIS:  Our understanding is that it is fairly simple, but
    16        the headlines cannot make defamatory what is not
    17        defamatory.  That is our understanding of the ------
    18
    19   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I think you are just approaching it from a
    20        bias on one side rather than the other.  What I think you
    21        have to get out of it are two things probably, although I
    22        will hear full argument on it.  First of all, you have to
    23        look at the whole of the relevant material, so that
    24        includes text and headlines, but also headlines as well as
    25        text.
    26
    27        You have to think what the impact of them altogether,
    28        including the prominence given to one or the other would be
    29        on the ordinary, sensible, reasonable reader, and then the
    30        second part of Charleston which might be relevant to this
    31        case, that a meaning has to be fixed on as taken by the
    32        notional reasonable reader, and it does not matter that two
    33        out of 10 readers might have taken another meaning from
    34        it.  You remember the argument in that case which the
    35        Plaintiffs were making were that a certain number of
    36        readers would have only looked at the photograph.  One has
    37        to look at what the bulk of readers would make of it and
    38        then fix upon that as the actual meaning, even though some
    39        people might just have read the text in this case, some
    40        might have just read the headlines.
    41
    42   MR. MORRIS:  I mean -----
    43
    44   MS. STEEL:  I do not know.  I mean, with respect, we do have a
    45        different opinion about this.  I do think that your minds
    46        should not be made up before we have had a chance to get
    47        advice and present our argument in full.
    48
    49   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  No, I accept that.  What I was trying to urge
    50        on you on the previous occasion is one reads the thing 
    51        through and through, and a meaning comes out at the end of 
    52        the day.  I want you to be able to point at matters which 
    53        might affect me one way or the other.
    54
    55        I have tried to help you by indicating pretty well, having
    56        read it a number of times and heard some argument, what it
    57        seemed to me at the moment to mean, but you bring your
    58        arguments.  All I am saying at the moment is I cannot see
    59        that you need to take very extensive legal advice.
    60

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