THE LAW OF LIBEL.

Kumara Times, Issue 839, 9 June 1879, Page 4

THE LAW OF LIBEL.

Chief Justice Way, of Adelaide, has done the Press signal service in defining with much liberality the law of libel as affecting newspapers. The case was against the South Australian Advertiser, and as put by His Honor to the jury, the direct question they bad to consider was were the ten lines in the newspaper, which formed the subject of the action, written maliciously. On this point His Honor said : It 1s not a question if those words were right in point of fact, or good in point of taste; it is not if they contain the inference and statements you would have drawn, or the language you would have employed. The question is—has the plaintiff (and the onus lies on him) made out to your satisfaction that that passage was written with malice—not merely implied malice, malice in law, but actual malice, malice in fact. ... If the writing is false,. the law implies that it is malicious; but if written on what is called a privileged occasion, although it may be false, the inference of malice which the law draws about a private writing about a private person is obliterated altogether ; and in order to make out that a writing is libellous—that a plaintiff is entitled to claim damages in respect of a writing on a public occasion—it is necessary to show that it was a malicious writing. It, is very properly admitted that this article was written on a privileged occasion; that was, that it was written on the topic of the social evil—that foul blot we so much regret on modern life. And certainly if there be a subject upon which a public writer is entitled to dwell, it would be that subject, and its relations with that other blot we regret, the drinking habits of the people, and the relations of both to the licensing system. An article on that subject is privileged in the eye of the law, and it is incumbent that the person who complains about it — the plaintiff in this case—should show, not merely that it contains statements which were distasteful to him, not merely that it contains statements which were injurious to him,' that it contains not merely statements that are untruthful, but he must also show that they were written with malice in fact. Further on in his charge His Honor came back to this point in a tone of equal distinctness and emphasis. He said . Of course . . . you are entitled to bear in mind the situation of the writer of the article ; he is a man writing, not an elaborate work to be read in the study, but he is writing an article for the daily Press, to be read to-day, and to produce the influence which was intended, and to be forgotten to-morrow. The exigencies of journalists in that position, writing (as suggested by the counsel for the plaintiff) with a current hand, writing rapidly, render his productions more liable than ordinary writings to bona fide mistakes in expression and fact ; and 1 must tell you that it is not sufficient to show on the part of the plaintiff that the article will bear a particular meaning from which a malicious intention may be inferred. You must be satisfied that the language was intentionally employed, that it was employed with a knowledge of its inaccuracy, and therefore with a bad and malicious motive.