Analyse and Assess the Pros and Cons of the Libel Defences of Justification and Fair Comment

i. The plaintiff bears the burden of proving that the defamatory statement made by the defendant is

Holding: Kelbel's conflicting explanations for Kailyn's injuries did not coincide with testimonies given my medical examiners, Lindsey, Olster, and a neighbor, so the court holds that evidence presented is sufficient for the jury to reach a verdict. The court also concludes

Johnson further maintains that the circuit court erred by admitting documents that were not properly authenticated. The State counters that “the appearance and contents of each of the documents contained sufficient information from which the factfinder could have reasonably concluded that the document was what the State purported it to be.” We hold that the documents admitted against Johnson were properly authenticated.

The Court ruled in favor of the appellant, and the decision is described as follows:

New Yorker Magazine it states that there must be clear intent to tarnish one’s reputation in order for libel tort law to come into effect. This case was very similar in regards that there was enough evidence that suggest there was intent to hurt the reputation of those mentioned in the articles. Also in the case Anderson v. Liberty Lobby it states the plaintiff must be able to prove that there was in fact damage done to one’s reputation and be able to proof to judges that there was actual malice. As with this case, the court of appeals must take in consideration if the ruling can be made in favor of the plaintiff and that if the summary judgement would go in favor of the plaintiff. The judges want to make sure that they are not wasting time and that there was actual damage done to the plaintiff which can be awarded for punitive

2. The statement is about a fact relevant to a material issue in the case, other than credibility. Fed. Rules Evid. 613(b). As has been said, if the prior inconsistent statement is not relevant to a material issue in the case, other than credibility, extrinsic proof of it is not permitted. In that case, the courts say that

The most famous defamation case, which still sets precedent in today's cases, is New York Times v. Sullivan (1964). New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) is the leading case on the question of defamation liability for media defendants. The case, heard before the Supreme Court, declared that public officials and figures could not recover for an alleged defamation unless they can prove both that the statement was false, and was made with actual malice. This decision prevents the news media from reporting on false or slanderous stories. It protects the country's public icons seeing they are almost always in the spotlight. In addition to defamation hindering media, obscenity and pornography on the net have placed limitations on what some websites may provide in terms of content.

The content of the claim is what determines the validity of a claim and not the person as in the case of

If a defamatory statement made of a class or group can reasonably be understood to refer to every member of it, each one has a cause of action. In Pryke v The Advertiser Newspapers Ltd (1984) 37 SASR 175, a 'Letter to the Editor' published in The Advertiser criticised the conduct of proceedings by an Industrial Commissioner, without specifying by name which of the 4 Commissioners had been concerned. All 4 Commissioners succeeded on the basis that the letter was defamatory of each of them. In Bjelke Petersen v Warburton [1987] 2 QdR 465, the Leader of the Opposition made statements about the 'government's corruption and its mismanagement', and said he would be asking questions about 'which Ministers had their hands in the till'. This was held capable of being defamatory of each of the 18 members of the Ministry. However, if the class is composed of too many people, then the matter will be incapable of identifying any particular individual.

Hi Cecelia, the information from the FNOL is gathering information to set up the claim. It does not provide a word for word account of what was said at the time of report.

Several states allow ‘privileges’ that enable the dismissal of defamation cases without trial. Such privileges include the alleged defamatory statement being considered ‘fair comment and criticism’ if on matters

Defamation mean damage to the character or notoriety of somebody, specifically created by the false proclamation or demonstration of another. The Connecticut District Court ruled to support Swift Transportation Incorporation for two reasons. To begin with, there was no motivation behind why manager realism in regards to worker references ought not be shielded from criticism suits when it happens on the site since it was just as essential as it would be one-on-one dialog.

The Defamation Act 1957 is an act relating to the laws of libel, slander and other malicious falsehoods. Defamation is a statement (of fact) about an individual, which is published, and which affects that person’s reputation. By looking at the Defamation Act 1957 and the Malaysian Penal Code, it would be probably rational to note that we have these laws in order to protect a person’s reputation regardless of the notion of press freedom since the right to publish by the media is not absolute[ http://repo.uum.edu.my/12982/1/1-s2.0-S1877.pdf]. The Malaysian Government through the Defamation Act 1957 and the Penal Code in the case of defamations there are some shortcomings and drawbacks of these acts which needs some transformations. There are few notions and recommendations which might help to soothe the current drawbacks of these acts.

The second major cas in that helped to clarify the meaning of libel was the court case of Crutis Publishing Co. v Butts. The case helped to clarify the meaning of defamation claims brought by private individuals. The case held that news organizations were protected from liability when printing allegations about public officials, although they may still be sued by public figures if the information they printed was recklessly gathered or if it was left unchecked. Again because it is difficult to prove either of theses, the press ended up with more freedom to print political corruption and scandal.

An example of this is the Elaine Chase v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2002] EWCA case. The Sun Newspaper tried to show there were reasonable grounds for suspicion after publishing a story headlined 'Nurse is probed over 18 deaths'. The police had been investigating the fact that a number of terminally ill children treated by one particular nurse had died. The police concluded there were no grounds to suspect the nurse but this was after The Sun had published their report. They paid £100,000 damages.