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
