"PUBLICATION."

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 109, 8 May 1912, Page 2

"PUBLICATION."

OPINION OF COURT OF APPEAL CHIEF JUSTICE'S DECISION UPHELD. The Court of Appeal delivered its roserved judgment to-day in tho Gini Angelini-Carlo Antico libel action. When the action came before tho Chief Justice (Sir RoWt Stout) in the Supreme Court, his Honour nonsuited plaintiff on the ground that publication had not been proved. From this decision, Angelini appealed. At the hearing Mr. A. H. Hindmareh appeared for appellant and Mr. A. Pair for respondent. The judgment of the Court of Appeal was delivered by Mr. Justice Denniston "We are able," said tho judgment, "to approach the question which i# neatly and clearly raibed by the present case, untrammelled by authority. It appears to us to be one to which only one answer is • possible. ' Publication ' a 6 applied to actions for defamation is the communication of the defamatory matter to some poreon or persons other than tho person ' defamed. That covers both spokcu and written defamation. The dictation of defamatory matter to another ie a publication of such matter. But such dictation is slander and not libel. To adopt the language of Mr. Odgers m his work on libel and slander, 'the publication of a slander involves only 'one act by the defendant; ho must speak the words so that come third person hears and understands them. But the publication of a libel is a more complex act. First, the defendant must compose- and write the libel ; next ho must hand what he has -written, or cau&o it to be delivered, to come third person ; then that third party must read and understand its contents; or 'it may be that after composing and writing it the defendant reads it aloud to some third person, who listens to the words and understands them. In this caeo the same act may be both the uttering of a blander and the publication of a libel.' It is essential to tho communication to another party of a defamatory writing that such writing should l>e in existence beforesuch communication— -aud thin in, of course, a. complete answer to tho proposition that (ho creation of such defamatory writing horn dictation can bo a. communication of it io the perron who is creating it. It is a communication of its contents — which is tho publication of a. slander from the mouth of the person dicta-ting, but can only become a libel if subsequently shown by him, or by his direction to come person other than the person 'defamed. . . . We are satisfied that his Honour the Chief Justice rightly held that there waß no evidence of publication, and that tho appeal should be dismissed with costs. "