Day 311 - 06 Dec 96 - Page 57
1 the professor also succeeded and got damages. What
2 I cannot remember is what the damages were in Upjohn's
3 favour or, for that matter, in the professor's favour.
4
5 MR. RAMPTON: I do not know about the professor. The professor
6 succeeded on the basis that Upjohn's response was out of
7 proportion. I am right about that am I not? The awards of
8 damages to Upjohn for what had been said about them, and it
9 was in a sense a single allegation not a broad range of
10 allegations like this case, was £60,000, and there was no
11 actual damage claimed or proved.
12
13 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Is there anything in the personal injury
14 world which you have which has led you to your bracket of
15 £14,000 to £60,000?
16
17 MR. RAMPTON: Nothing at all. I noted what the Court of Appeal
18 had said in Upjohn. I take that to mean not that you get
19 out Kemp and Kemp and go trawling through it, which would
20 be a nightmare, but simply that one looks at libelous as
21 though they were personal injuries and one keeps in mind
22 the Court of Appeal's guidance as to what the maximum
23 awards in personal injury actions tend to be, and then one
24 says to oneself, by that standard how serious is this
25 libel?
26
27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I know that Lord Bingham referred to loss of
28 a limb, blindness and very severe brain damage as the three
29 categories in the sort of figures you might get for those.
30 I think he said £52,000, £90,000 and £125... or something
31 of that kind. But would it be wrong to say that the real
32 message there is that the usefulness of referring to
33 personal injury damages is to show what might be a
34 reasonable ceiling rather than to look at gradations up to
35 that reasonable ceiling?
36
37 MR. RAMPTON: That strict gradational comparison was not
38 recommended by the Court of Appeal and could not be because
39 it had been expressly disapproved in Broadway Approvals,
40 which is a decision of the Court of Appeal and also by the
41 House of Lords in Broom v Castle. You cannot do that. You
42 cannot say, is this comparable to the loss of a limb or is
43 this comparable to the loss of an eye, whatever? Because
44 then you are comparing the incommensurable with the
45 incommensurable and you get the double effect; it is just
46 not on. My reading of John is that the Court of Appeal
47 thought that that was right. But what you do look at is
48 the question, which is really a question of public
49 interest, are these enormous jury awards for libel
50 acceptable in the light of the sort of awards that the
51 courts are making for personal injury?
52
53 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. The next matter is that on page 26 of
54 your legal submissions you refer to Lewis v Daily
55 Telegraph, and something Lord Read said there. I will not
56 dig out the actual report but there was a sentence of Lord
57 Read's, which I have written down, speaking of a Company:
58 "Its reputation can be injured by a libel, but that injury
59 must sound in money." He was not referring to special
60 loss, what was he referring to?
