Gillick v Brook Advisory Centres & Anor

On a preliminary issue in libel, the court must decide whether the words, read once in their natural and ordinary sense by the ordinary reasonable reader, are reasonably capable of conveying the pleaded defamatory meaning. The reader may read between the lines and engage in loose thinking, but is neither avid for scandal nor to be attributed uncommunicated specialist or historical knowledge. Forced or unreasonable meanings must be rejected. A publication which attributed a legal case to fear, uncertainty, deterrence from contraceptive advice and increased teenage pregnancies was capable of suggesting that the claimant bore culpable moral blame. The issue should therefore proceed to trial.

The respondents published and distributed a factsheet about teenage conceptions. It stated that the claimant's earlier legal case had confused young people about confidential advice, deterred some from obtaining contraceptive help, and left fear and uncertainty among teenagers and professionals.

The claimant alleged that the passage meant that she was morally responsible for an increase in teenage pregnancies during the 1980s. Eady J, deciding a preliminary issue, held that the words were incapable of that defamatory meaning and dismissed the action. The claimant appealed.

The central issue was whether the factsheet was reasonably capable of conveying the pleaded meaning to an ordinary reasonable reader, including young readers without knowledge of the earlier litigation.

1. Appeal allowed unanimously. Lord Phillips MR held, with Latham and Jonathan Parker LJJ agreeing, that the passage was capable of bearing the pleaded defamatory meaning. The first-instance ruling and consequential dismissal could not stand.
2. The correct inquiry is whether the words, in their natural and ordinary meaning and read once by an ordinary reasonable reader, fall within the permissible spectrum of meanings. The court may exclude a strained, forced or wholly unreasonable interpretation. The reader may read between the lines and engage in loose thinking, but is neither naïve nor unduly suspicious and is not avid for scandal.
3. The judge had correctly stated that test but misapplied it. He attributed to the notional reader knowledge that the claimant had acted from genuine family, personal and religious convictions. The factsheet did not communicate that background. Young readers in particular could not be assumed to know it.
4. Read without that extraneous knowledge, the factsheet said that the claimant's legal case confused young people, deterred them from seeking contraceptive advice, caused enduring fear and uncertainty, and was an unjustified attack on young people's rights. It was reasonably capable of leading a reader to think that she was in some degree culpably to blame for the increase in pregnancies among girls aged 15 to 19.
5. The court did not determine the meaning ultimately conveyed or whether it would be established at trial. It decided only that the pleaded meaning was capable of being found. The respondents were ordered to pay the appeal costs, and lower-court costs paid by the claimant were to be repaid.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Allowed the claimant's appeal in [2001] EWCA Civ 1263. It held that the disputed passage was capable of the pleaded defamatory meaning.
• Queen's Bench Division (Eady J): On a preliminary issue, held the passage incapable of the pleaded meaning and dismissed the action. No citation is stated in the judgment.