Day 084 - 07 Feb 95 - Page 14


     
     1
     2   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  That side I have already ruled on, have
     3        I not?  I mean, Mr. Rampton may wish to say something to me
     4        about the first part.
     5
     6   MS. STEEL:   I would just repeat what I said last week,
     7        really.  We had to plead the whole of our case and say
     8        which bits of the leaflet we were defending and how we were
     9        defending them.  We still have to do that in court as well,
    10        but it seems that the Plaintiffs seem to think that they do
    11        not have a similar obligation.
    12
    13   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Just pause a moment.  No doubt on a later
    14        occasion I will hear Mr. Rampton about that but, so far as
    15        I understand it, part of what the Plaintiffs contend is
    16        this:  Firstly, that in law there is a burden on
    17        Defendants, so far as a Plaintiff's claim of defamation is
    18        concerned, to justify allegations of fact if they can, that
    19        is, to prove the allegation is true.  Secondly, the
    20        Plaintiffs say that that burden in relation to their claim
    21        of defamation being true, if you cannot do that, I am
    22        entitled to draw the inference that the allegations of fact
    23        are not true, and that you must have always known that you
    24        could not prove that they were true, and that that argument
    25        is even stronger if there is not even any evidence at all,
    26        not just evidence which I do not accept, but not any
    27        evidence at all, coming from you supporting the truth of
    28        the allegations of fact.
    29
    30        If that is the situation, the Plaintiffs argue, at least in
    31        part, I am entitled to draw the inference that what was
    32        said in the leaflet (assuming for the purposes of this
    33        discussion that it is proved that you participated in its
    34        publication) was lies.
    35
    36        What I have tried to say in the past in relation to that is
    37        that whether I am prepared to draw any such inference is
    38        another matter.  I might, for instance, consider that you
    39        genuinely believed the allegations of fact to be true
    40        because of something you had read or something someone had
    41        told you, even though as it turned out when you got to
    42        court you had no admissible evidence to prove to me that
    43        they were true or that you had insufficient evidence.
    44
    45        But if there is any further argument you want to put on
    46        that, then do so or leave it over to argue when we come
    47        back to the matter, or wait and hear what, if anything,
    48        Mr. Rampton chooses to say on that and then address me
    49        further on it.
    50 
    51   MS. STEEL:   There is the other point about identification of 
    52        what they are saying is untrue. 
    53
    54   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes, I have not dealt with that.  You started
    55        with that and I have said we will wait and hear what
    56        Mr. Rampton said about that.  I am merely dealing with what
    57        you went on to say when you said:  "They cannot say it is
    58        untrue because we have not proved it is true" which is an
    59        argument which has come up before and which I have ruled
    60        upon in much the same terms as I have given ad-lib, as it

Prev Next Index