The document applies to all student doing law despite your year of study. it highlights the ingredients that lead to defamation, defines defamation and what is also known as character assignation. The offence of injuring a person’s character, fame or reputation by false and malicious statements ...
DEFAMATION.
The offence of injuring a person’s character, fame or reputation by false and malicious
statements comprehensive of both libel and slander.1
The law on defamation is one that creates a delicate between an individual’s right to protect
their reputation and the right to freedom of expression, which involves the right to freedom
of the press to report on and draw attention to matters of public interest.
Defamation can take two forms;
1) Libel
Libel is usually written or takes some permanent form. Statutes have created other forms
of libel like broadcast and television performance, performances of a play, material in a
film sound track. Youssoupoff v Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Limited 1934, where a
film imputed that the claimant, a Russian princess, had been raped by Rasputin, the so
called ‘mad monk’ who was a figure of great and allegedly evil influence in pre-
revolutionary Russia. While the claimant was probably pitied, and certainly there was no
suggestion that she that she was in any way to blame for the incident, the court held that
the statement could tend to make people ‘shun and avoid’ her.
2) Slander
A statement in some non-permanent form usually in some form of spoken words
although a gesture may suffice.
Libel was actionable per-se (you did not have to prove actual loss and general damage
could be recovered). In slander, one had to show special damage, a loss or a disadvantage
measurable in monetary terms.
Under section 1 of Defamation Act 2013, in both slander and libel the claimant must
show that he has suffered serious harm to his reputation.
1
Blacks Law Dictionary 9th Edition.
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