Krause v Associated Newspapers Ltd

Words are capable of being defamatory only if they are capable of causing a reasonable person to think worse of the claimant. An inaccurate report does not itself create a cause of action in libel. Nor does an offensive reference to a personal characteristic suffice where the words do not lower reputation, or where the information is true. A claimant cannot avoid strike-out by advancing a new defamatory meaning or complaint at the hearing. Where the pleaded case is incapable of success and no valuable remedy remains, the court may strike out the action without permitting further amendment.

The claimant brought a libel action against the publisher of Mail Online concerning an article reporting her criminal proceedings and the reduction of her community-service sentence. She complained principally of references to her being transsexual and of an inaccurate assertion that the sentence had been reduced because a lawnmower was too heavy to push.

The defendant applied to strike out the action, relying on the pleaded case’s failure to disclose a defamatory meaning, procedural deficiencies, and the absence of any valuable remedy. The central issue was whether the words complained of were capable of being defamatory and whether any viable reformulation or amendment remained open to the claimant.

1. Application granted. The libel action was struck out.
2. The governing question was whether the words complained of were capable of bearing a defamatory meaning. The court applied the approach in Jeynes v News Magazines Limited, [2008] EWCA Civ 13, and Thornton v Telegraph Media, [2010] EWHC 1414 (QB); [2010] EMLR 25.
3. The reference to the claimant’s gender was not capable of lowering her reputation in the minds of right-thinking people. In any event, the reference was true. Privacy considerations did not assist on these facts because the claimant had herself relied publicly on the information in earlier criminal proceedings.
4. The lawnmower allegation was inaccurate, but no reasonable reader could think worse of the claimant merely because she had successfully appealed against a sentence on the ground that the unpaid work was physically too onerous. The article’s criticism of the court did not make the words defamatory of the claimant.
5. The claimant’s attempts at the hearing to allege dishonesty and to rely on other passages concerning the harassment proceedings did not cure the pleaded defects. Those complaints had not been properly identified in the claim and the defendant had not been given fair notice of them.
6. Further amendment was refused. The claimant’s conviction for harassment, and the dismissal of her application for permission to appeal against that conviction, meant that a reformulated claim concerning the article’s account of those allegations offered nothing of value. The position was therefore irremediable.

The judgment describes earlier proceedings involving the same claimant, including the dismissal of her renewed application for permission to appeal against conviction and the allowance of her appeal against sentence in [2012] EWCA Crim 2058. It also refers to an earlier first-instance libel judgment in the same underlying dispute, [2013] EWHC 3400 (QB). Those decisions were background to the present first-instance strike-out application.