Charleston and another v News Group Newspapers Limited and another

The House of Lords dismissed the appellants' appeal in a libel action arising from prominently placed headlines and photomontages. The court reaffirmed the orthodox rules for determining the natural and ordinary meaning of allegedly defamatory matter: the meaning is that which would be attributed by the ordinary, reasonable reader, taking the publication as a whole (the established "bane and antidote" principle). Where no legal innuendo is pleaded, a plaintiff may not rely on a hypothetical subgroup of readers who read only part of a publication to establish a distinct defamatory meaning. The court held that the captions and text neutralised any defamatory implication of the headline and pictures so that, on the ordinary reader standard, the publication was not defamatory.

Background and parties:

Two actors who played Harold and Madge in the television serial "Neighbours" sued the News of the World and its editor for libel in respect of a publication which placed their faces on bodies in pornographic photomontages together with a large, eye-catching headline. The article explained that the faces were superimposed without the plaintiffs' consent and criticised the makers of a pornographic computer game.

Procedural history:

• At first instance a preliminary issue was tried before Blofeld J, who on 22 January 1993 found for the defendants and dismissed the action.
• The plaintiffs' appeal to the Court of Appeal was unanimously dismissed on 17 December 1993 (unreported, Court of Appeal Transcript No. 1549 of 1993).
• The plaintiffs then appealed to the House of Lords, which delivered judgment on 30 March 1995.

Nature of the claim and relief sought: The claim was for damages for libel. The plaintiffs pleaded that the publication conveyed defamatory meanings implying they had willingly participated in pornographic activity or consented to the use of their images.

Issues framed:

• Whether, in the absence of a legal innuendo, a plaintiff may succeed in libel by relying on a meaning conveyed only to a subgroup of readers who read part of a publication (so-called "limited readers").
• Whether the headlines and photographs, taken in isolation, could support a defamatory meaning despite explanatory text and captions elsewhere in the same publication.

Court’s reasoning:

• The court reaffirmed the established principle (exemplified by Chalmers v Payne and expounded in Slim v Daily Telegraph Ltd) that the natural and ordinary meaning is what the ordinary, reasonable reader would collectively understand the publication to mean, taking the publication as a whole.
• Evidence of how different individual readers might interpret a publication is generally inadmissible when no legal innuendo is alleged; the jury must determine a single meaning for the notional reasonable reader.
• Permitting severance to rely on hypothetical limited readers would undermine that single-standard principle and allow plaintiffs to recover for meanings not attributable to the ordinary reader.
• Applying these principles, the House of Lords concluded that the captions and early text neutralised any defamatory suggestion in the headline and photomontage; an ordinary reader would understand that the faces had been superimposed without consent and would not think worse of the actors.

Wider observations: The court observed the tension between common-sense recognition that many readers scan headlines and the legal rule requiring a single reasonable-reader standard, but held that the law’s single-standard approach provides appropriate scope for jury evaluation of context and layout.

Appeal dismissed. The House of Lords affirmed that the natural and ordinary meaning of a publication is that attributed by the ordinary, reasonable reader taking the publication as a whole; absent a legal innuendo, a plaintiff cannot succeed by relying on a subgroup of readers who read only part of the publication. On the facts the captions and text neutralised any defamatory imputation from the headline and photographs.

Preliminary issue decided for the defendants by Blofeld J on 22 January 1993 (preliminary issue: publication not capable of bearing the defamatory meanings pleaded). Appeal to the Court of Appeal dismissed unanimously on 17 December 1993 (unreported; Court of Appeal Transcript No. 1549 of 1993). Appeal to the House of Lords dismissed on 30 March 1995 ([1995] UKHL 6).