AFTER SEVEN YEARS

Evening Star, Issue 21292, 22 December 1932, Page 12

AFTER SEVEN YEARS

MR H. 6. WELLS TRIUMPHS EXPENSIVE LEGAL DEFENCE: The famous writer, Mr H. G, Wells, has emerged victoriously from a seven years’ war on his literary reputation, but at a cost of £3,000. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council recently dismissed, with costs, the appeal of Miss Florence A. Deeks, a Canadian authoress, who alleged that_ Mr Wells, together with the Macmillan Company; the Macmillan Company of Canada, and other respondents, had deliberately infringed the copyright of her unpublished work, ‘ The Web.’ The infringement was said to be embodied in Mr Wells’s ‘ Outline of History.’ “ I am sorry for the poor woman,” said Mr Wells, “but I am, also, extremely sorry for myself. These actions brought by Miss Deeks will have cost me £3,000, less the amount I shall recover of my taxed costs. “ I have been vindicated in three courts of justice, but. despite that, 1 have lost a considerable sum of money, and; -which is more important, my reputation has suffered. If mud is flung, some of it sticks. “ This legal persecution is much more serious than an ordinary libel. Its effects are more subtle and more lasting. At intervals, over a period of seven years, I have been subjected to the most unwelcome publicity. “ The action should never have been brought—and that is not only my personal opinion. Mr Justice Raney, in the Supreme Court of Ontario, said, on September 27, 1930: ‘ That she (Miss Deeks) was not in a condition of mind to judge fairly of the very serious charges she was bringing against a reputable publishing house and an eminent and respectable author ought to have been obvious to her literary and legal advisers. “‘This action ought not to have been brought; having been brought, it ought to nave been discontinued after the examinations for discovery, and certainly it ought not to have been brought to trial. As it is, I have no alternative but to give the defendants their costs.’ “I have up to the present never received a penny of the costs,” continued Mr Wells, “that were awarded to mo in the Canadian courts. The only costs ordered to be deposited were for the appeal to the Privy Council—about £550.” Lord Atkin* who delivered the judgment of the Privy Council, said that all the judges of the two Canadian courts decided that there had been no copying, and their lordships were entirely of the same view.