To create a law case for defamation you need three essentials :
1) The person who made the offending statement
2) The person who has had there reputation damaged
3) A whitness or whitnesses who have heard or read the statement
With this complete essentials the law can be taken into effect the damages that have been done to the different parties weighing out what needs to be done.
There are many terms used in a defamation course these include :
Libel- This is a printed false statement that is damaging a person/companies reputation. This is the written form of defamation.
Slander- This is the use of the spoken word to create a harmful comment that is damaging to a person/companies reputation. This is the spoken form of defamation.
Fair comment- This is a common law defence that allows a journalist to express statements that may be true because of public interest. This can be done as long as the statements that are made do not happen with the intention to harm the reported person.
Privilege- Privilege is used within the court case as a defence. This can be used to say that they are innocent because of different reasons. There are two main privilege statements they are :
Absolute- This covers anything that has been said in court or the house of commons.
Qualified- This is using information from an official police statement. This is subject to it being without malice or interesting to the public.
Public Interest- This is used most often to defend defamation as if a subject is public interest meaning that it has to be publicily heard such as dodgy scams within the goverment. This can easily get mixed with interesting to the public in which they publish gossip stories that offensive to peoples reputation just cause its interesting.
Libel court case
As an example I have found a recent libel case that sees a proffesional typist take to Twitter after not being payed for work she completed for Resolution production . She is know facing libel court costs as she tweeted straight to Important people in the industry such as Sir Alan Sugar and the owner of the company itself. The full report can be found at : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2311517/Typist-facing-100-000-libel-taking-Twitter-complain-150-unpaid-bill.html
Who was involved and what was said ?
The two parties involved include the 55 year old typist Lesley Kemp and a the production company Resolution production. The case started after Kemp completed some transcription work for the company on a freelance basis. The production company then failed to pay her the £150 she was owed and when she did recive money two months after the work was completed they docked her £25 for ' bank charges'. After this the typist took to twitter and tweeted pleas to the buisness owner Kirby Keans and other buisness Vips including Alan Sugar, Theo Pathitas and Duncan Bannatyne. In this pleas she tried to name and shame the company for their lack of professionalism. This was when the company hit back with the libel court case.
What was the statement or claiming damage ?
There was no direct statement published. Instead Resolution production has claimed that they want to the damages to be paid for an up to value of £50,000. After this the trypist took legal advice to find that if she lost the case she could be paying the court cost and fines at a minimum of £100,000.What was the outcome ?
The case is still yet to go to court although it has been stated that it might not. Although people have come together to help Kemp by raising £2000 for initial court costs.The Defamation Act 2013 replaces the 1996 Act- why was this ?
The recent Act changes that were made include changing the court proceedings as now the victim has to show series harm or damages this maybe in the form of losing money from there organisation or having a large impact on their everyday lives. They have also altered it to suit the need to include modern technology as word can be spread faster then before, to fix this they have introduced a defence for people using social media sites. This means people creating content that harms people through Facebook or Twitter can now be accused of Defamation. The main problem they have tried to stop is the use of fair- comment , public image or honest opinion within the court situations as this has been use for many years to defend statements within the media. This arises the problem between what is public intrest and what is interesting to the public as one can help a journalist with their peice and the other can place them within Defemation.