Adams Awarded £l500 In Action Against Walsh

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29860, 28 June 1962, Page 11

Adams Awarded £l500 In Action Against Walsh

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, June 27. A jury in the Supreme Court at Wellington today awarded George Adams, a trade union secretary, £l5OO damages against Fintan Patrick Walsh, president of the Federation of Labour, for slander. Mr Justice Hutchison entered judgment for Adams. The jury was out for three hours.

Adams, secretary of the Wellington Amalgamated Society of Painters and Decorators, Display and Poster Artists’ Industrial Union of Workers, had claimed damages of £7500. The statement of claim ailed ged that the words complained of were used by Walsh at a meeting of the Federation of Labour at Wellington on February 27. 1962. It was alleged Adams had been greatly injured in his character, credit and reputation as a trade union secretary and as a trade unionist. Mr J. H. Dunn is appearing for Adams and Mr C. H. Arndt, with him Mr W. J. Kemp, for Walsh. “A case of this kind places on the shoulders of a jury the same duties as lies on a judge if he has to deal with a case without a jury—that is to consider the case on the evidence before the Court, unaffected by personalities and all extraneous considerations,” his Honour said in his summing up. The evidence in the case covered a very wide field and some of it had indirect relevancy to the issues in the case. In the last resort, in a civil case, the burden of proof rested on a balance of orobabiltities. said his Honour. The more serious an allegation, the more definite the balance of probabilities must be. A case of alleged slander called for careful consideration because of two opposing rights, that of freedom of speech and the right of a person to the protection of his reputation. The two rights might compete and to get a proper balance the law had laid down a number of principles. Defamation consisted of the publication of a false and defamatory stoitemenit concerning another person with-

out lawful excuse, said his Honour. Two defamatory statements were alleged by Adams, but they were really part of the one statement. The first question was whether the first statement was true in substance. In the defence of justification the burden of proof rested on Walsh. The question whether Adams had been rightly convicted of theft had no relevance and the jury did not have to re-try him. “Sting In Statement” What required justification was the statement that he had been convicted of stealing from hiis mates or fellow unionists. That was the sting in the statement. Many people might think

that a petty theft from a workmate was a despicable thing and more serious than a petty theft from someone else. The question arose as to what the words complained of would mean to those who heard them, who in this case were all men of standing in the trade union movement. Adams had to prove that both statements complained of referred to him. It was not disputed that there was publication of certain words by Walsh. The dispute was whether the first statement was true and whether the second statement had any relation to Adams. It was for the jury to decide whether there was malice on the part of Walsh.