London Artists Ltd v Littler

Facts

The defendant, a well-known impresario, was presenting a play in the West End. The principal actors each gave notice terminating their engagements at around the same time. The defendant wrote to them alleging that there was a plot, involving their agents and others, to bring the run of the play to an end, and released the letter to the press. The actors and the agency sued for libel. The defendant relied on fair comment on a matter of public interest.

History

At trial the judge held that the subject was not a matter of public interest, so that fair comment was not available, and the claimants succeeded; the defendant appealed.

Issue

Whether the fate of a West End play and the conduct of its actors was a matter of public interest for the purposes of fair comment; and whether the allegation of a plot was comment or a statement of fact requiring proof of its truth.

Held

Appeal dismissed. The matter was of public interest, so the judge was wrong on that point, but the defence of fair comment still failed because the allegation of a plot was a statement of fact, not comment, and the defendant had not proved it true.

Ratio

• The defence of fair comment protects only comment, and only comment based on facts that are true or privileged; an allegation that is in substance a statement of fact, such as an imputation that the claimants conspired to bring a play to an end, cannot be defended as comment and must be justified.
• A matter is of public interest where it is such as to affect people at large so that they may be legitimately interested in, or concerned at, what is going on or what may happen to them or others; it is not confined to matters of government or public administration.

The judgments

Key reasoning

• The question whether a matter is of public interest is for the judge, and it should be approached broadly, covering matters such as the conduct of public entertainments which invite public attention.
• Fair comment is a defence for opinion; a defendant cannot rely on it where the defamatory sting lies in an assertion of fact.
• The allegation that the actors and agents had combined to close the play was the central defamatory imputation and was presented as fact, so the defendant needed to prove that it was true.
• Since the defendant had not proved the existence of a plot, the defence failed even though the subject was of public interest, and the judgment for the claimants stood.

Where it fits in the module

Listed under section 5 of the Defamation Act 1952, which concerned justification where not every charge is proved, the case shows the significance of proving the truth of factual imputations and the difference between defending a statement as true and defending it as comment. It is central to the distinction between fact and opinion that also underlies honest opinion under the Defamation Act 2013, and to the question how far defendants must prove the factual basis of what they say.

Criticisms

• The line between fact and comment is notoriously difficult to draw, and treating an inference of a plot as pure fact may deny protection to what readers would understand as the defendant's opinion.
• Requiring proof of the truth of the underlying facts imposes a heavy burden on defendants speaking on matters of acknowledged public interest.
• The broad definition of public interest is welcome but gives little guidance on its outer limits.
• The case illustrates the chilling potential of the pre-2013 law, under which a speaker on a public matter could lose the defence entirely through failure to prove a single factual allegation.