Category: Defamation

The disjointed progress of the Defamation Bill, 2006

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| Defamation, Defamation Bill 2006, Irish Law, Libel tourism

As the Dáil resumed yesterday, last week’s post on libel tourism has prompted me to pick up the story of the tortuous progress of the Defamation Bill, 2006 through the Houses of the Oireachtas [the Houses of Parliament]. When we left it on this blog, it had just scraped the through the Seanad [the Senate, the Upper House of Parliament] on the second time of asking; thereafter, it had a brief consideration in the Dáil [functionally equivalent to a House of Commons, the Lower House of Parliament] before the Summer recess halted its progress once more. This post, and the next few, will consider these stages of its progress, just in time to wait (and – probably – wait and wait) for further developments in the new Dáil session.

The Defamation Bill in the Seanad
The Defamation Bill, 2006 was introduced into the Seanad on 7 July 2006, and thereby began a long and winding road to enactment, a destination it has not yet reached. …

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Libel Tourists – Is Ireland selling what they’re buying?

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| Defamation, libel tourism

UN HRC logoIn July, the UN Human Rights Committee, as part of its triennial review of member states’ compliance with human rights norms, criticised the UK’s record on freedom of expression (CCPR/C/GBR/CO/6) in the following terms:

25. The Committee is concerned that the State party’s practical application of the law of libel has served to discourage critical media reporting on matters of serious public interest, adversely affecting the ability of scholars and journalists to publish their work, including through the phenomenon known as “libel tourism.” The advent of the internet and the international distribution of foreign media also create the danger that a State party’s unduly restrictive libel law will affect freedom of expression worldwide on matters of valid public interest …

The State party should re-examine its technical doctrines of libel law, and consider the utility of a so-called “public figure” exception, requiring proof by the plaintiff of actual malice in order to go forward on actions concerning reporting on public officials and prominent public figures, …

(The report is on this page, scroll down to the UK section, click on the E in the right-most column; the UN server won’t accept a deeper link, unfortunately.)

Reports and reactions: Amnesty | Blogzilla | Guardian here and here | Independent here and here | Jurist | Media Law Prof Blog | Press Gazette | Telegraph here and here | Scotsman.…

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Declaration of Falsity

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| Defamation

Section 26(1) of the Defamation Bill, 2006 (as initiated) provides

A person who claims to be the subject of a statement that he or she alleges is defamatory may apply to the High Court for an order (in this Act referred to as a “declaratory order”) that the statement is false and defamatory of him or her.

It is intended as a remedy for those who simply want court recognition that they were defamed but who do not necessarily want a remedy in damages. An excellent example of how such an order might work is provided by a story by Frances Gibb in yesterday’s Times (with added links):

Sir Salman Rushdie wins apology from former bodyguard over libel

…

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The Defamation Bill is passed by the Seanad, eventually!

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| Defamation

Seanad ceiling, from the Oireachtas websiteAt the second time of asking, and after lengthy debate (which I will analyse in a later post) the Defamation Bill, 2006 finally passed the Seanad [Senate, or Upper House] last night (hat tip, Daithí­). The full text of that final debate is now available here.

This is encouraging news, but we have only reached half-time in the long game that is Oireachtas [Parliamentary] procedure. It must now go to the Dáil [Lower House, functionally equivalent to the House of Commons], where the stakes and the profile will be higher. The stakes will be higher because there will be no further opportunity to amend the Bill once it passes. And the profile will be higher because Dáil debates always have a greater impact on the public and media consciousness than do Seanad debates (for example, there is barely a whimper of recognition of the importance of last night’s debate in the mainstream media – apart from the Irish Examiner and the Irish Independent, the Irish Times Seanad Report (sub req’d) discusses an entirely different issue, with the Defamation Bill getting a single sentence near the end, and no mention at all that it had been passed, and there seems to be no mention of it on the RTÉ News website).…

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Beware, unintended consequences

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| Blasphemy, Censorship, Defamation, Media and Communications

Durer Blasphemy woodcut, via wikipediaDaithí has just published a wonderful post on the The strange death of criminal libel?. On the issue of criminal libel, he concludes that the Defamation Bill, 2006, currently receiving its Report and Final Stages in the Seanad even as I write this post,

will without further amendment provide for

* the repeal of the [Defamation Act], 1961 [blogged here] including Part 2 dealing with various criminal offences
* the explicit repeal of “the common law offences of criminal libel, seditious libel and obscene libel�
* no provisions on a new offence of the publication of gravely harmful statements
* no specific mention of blasphemy or blasphemous libel other than the repeal of s 13 (as part of the general repeal) of the 1961 Act (though I think that might mean that, especially in conjunction with the Constitution, blasphemous libel – or blasphemy, indeed – would continue to exist – but see note below on the definition of criminal libel)

And that, I believe, is good news.

I agree; it is thoroughly good news. I agree that the repeal of the 1961 Act and of various of the common law libel offences is a good thing. Moreover, the removal of the proposed replacement offence of publication of gravely harmful statements is an even better thing.…

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Appeal overturns food review case

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| Defamation

Irish News portico, via BBC website.Under the above headline, the BBC is reporting that “the Court of Appeal [in Northern Ireland] has quashed a controversial libel case, seen as a watershed for press freedom”. As already discussed on this blog (here, here and here) food critics writing restaurant reviews will usually be able to rely on the defence of fair comment. As I noted in an earlier post, the case arose out of a review of a Belfast pizzeria in the Irish News. …

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What is a “publication”?

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| Defamation

A facsimile of a page from what was later known as the Post-och Inrikes Tidningar, from 1645, its first year of publicationI’ve just noticed something odd about the Defamation Bill currently before the Seanad, and I’ve been looking at it for so long now that I’m annoyed with myself that I haven’t seen this issue before. I was recently asked a very simple question:

What is a “publication” for the purposes of the Defamation Bill?

Unfortunately, that simple question doesn’t have a simple answer. There is no definition of the word in the interpretation section (section 2) which is odd since by my count the word is used no less than 71 times in the Bill. …

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Infamy! Defamation! Haughey!

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| Defamation

Charles J Haughey, from Ireland.com“Infamy! Infamy!” Charlie Haughey (left) (ireland.com | wikipedia) might have said during one of the many political crises he survived, “They’ve all got it in fo’ me!”

I don’t know who told that joke about Haughey,* but it’s been going round in my mind this weekend whilst reading Bruce Arnold’s biography of Charles Haughey (B Arnold Haughey. His Life and Unlucky Deeds (Harper Collins, London, 1993) (Amazon: hbk | pbk)). I’ve been enjoying it immensely; and, in it, I discovered that Haughey, in 1961, as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Justice (Oscar Traynor, whom he was to succeed as Minister after the general election later the same year) had taken the second stage of the Defamation Bill in 1961 (Arnold, p 32). This was one Bill amongst a raft of legislation which had been in preparation in the Department for some time before. Haughey, as Arnold puts it, acted not so much an initiator of these Bills as “a facilitator in putting through the backlog of legislation” (ibid), resulting in a “a valuable process of tidying up and of bringing the law up to date, rather than anything that could be characterised as fundamental social reform” (ibid, p 41); but, in doing so, as Dick Walsh wrote, “he managed to meet the fastidious standards set by the secretary of his Department.…

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