ACTION FOR DAMAGES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 217, 12 August 1940, Page 8

ACTION FOR DAMAGES.

JURY RETIRES. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, Aug. 12. “The case for defendants is that plaintiff suffered not a i>enny damage by reason of anything tvhich appeared in the newspaper Labour Standard,” said Mr A. H. Johnstone, K.C., opening the defence to-day in the action before Mr Justice Fair and a Supremo Court jury in which Francis Simpson, a printer, claimed £IOOO damages from tho Worker Printing and Publishing Company and John Glover, publisher, for false and malicious publication. Mr Johnstone said the Standard published an apology for a mistake made in the first report, and suggested nominal damages. Addressing the Court for plaintiff, Mr Dickson said that in none of the reports of the Magistrate’s Court proceedings in other newspapers was any reference made to Communists, and the Magistrate, in liis ‘decision, said it was not a question of any man’s private opinion, but of the effect of a pamphlet on the war effort. Only the Labour Standard went out of its way to attack the Communists because some of the men prosecuted happened to be Communists. The Standard had published the false statement that plaintiff was a Communist and was associated with the Communist paper, the People’s Voice. In summing up, the Judge indicated that to call a man a Communist when he was not a Communist might, in the present-day meaning of the word, constitute libel. His Honour suggested that the damages suffered in this case might not be considered heavy. The jury retired at 1 o’clock.