Day 284 - 22 Oct 96 - Page 07
1 You may have an article in a newspaper which says that a
2 person, a director of a company, is dishonest, that he sold
3 funds belonging to the company of which he is a director, X
4 thousand pounds on 1st January and then X thousand pounds
5 on various other dates, and ends up saying "We think he is
6 not fit to be a director of any public company".
7
8 Insofar as those matters contain general charges which are
9 said to be charges of fact, that he is a dishonest man and
10 that he is not fit to run a public company, insofar as
11 those are said to be general charges of fact, you could
12 call not only evidence that he did steal money on the dates
13 alleged, but you could call other matters of fact as to his
14 conduct of the company which you say justify those general
15 charges of statement of fact.
16
17 Insofar as you said that the statement 'he is not fit to
18 run a public company' is a comment rather than a statement
19 of fact, you could only rely on matters which are actually
20 set out in the article, namely the thefts on the first day
21 of each month or sufficiently referred to by the article.
22 In other words, they may not be expressly set out but some
23 reference is given, which, as I understand it, leads to
24 that. Or you could say it is a matter of notorious public
25 knowledge that this is the situation, and rely upon that.
26
27 What you could not say is "We can justify the comment which
28 we say it is, that he is unfit to run a company by saying,
29 by proving that he is not only a married man but he has got
30 six mistresses and he spends most of his time visiting them
31 rather than looking after the company". I very much doubt
32 that you could rely upon those as matters of fact which
33 justified the statement of fact, because certainly so far
34 as comment is concerned, you are bringing in things which
35 you have not given the reader the benefit of when he read
36 the article so that he could form his own view as to
37 whether the man was fit to run the company or not.
38
39 Now, in due course, we will no doubt hear whether --
40 because these are the sort of things I want to ask
41 Mr. Rampton about, but I am not going to ask him about
42 company directors who have mistresses, but I certainly want
43 to ask him about some of the statements which were made in
44 this leaflet, and if he says they are statements of fact
45 and they are general charges, what are you entitled to rely
46 on in an attempt to justify them, and insofar as he might
47 say 'Well, that is a matter of comment rather than a
48 statement of fact', what are you entitled to rely on to
49 show that it is fair comment.
50
51 But I think you do have to go first on this, and although I
52 did not say it in my reasons the other day, one reason I am
53 particularly keen to hear you before Mr. Rampton is I know
54 what he says on behalf of his clients what the meaning of
55 this leaflet is, as he complains of it on behalf of his
56 clients. I do not know in several instances what you and
57 Miss Steel say the meaning is.
58
59 I know what you pleaded as the meaning which you propose to
60 justify, but large parts of some of those meanings seem to
