Greensill Capital (UK) Ltd & Anor v Reuters News And Media Ltd

In a defamation claim, the natural and ordinary meaning of an article must be assessed by reading the publication as a whole. The court must identify its essential defamatory message and should avoid adding elaborate factual ingredients that do little to alter that message.

A publication may clearly allege that false information was provided while remaining agnostic about whether it was knowingly false. A reference to the ingredients of a criminal offence does not, without more, convey that the claimant committed it. Where the article leaves the reader to suspend judgment and investigate how the statement arose, it conveys a Chase level 3 meaning rather than guilt or clear grounds for suspicion.

The claim concerned an article published by Reuters about a statement made by Greensill Capital (UK) Ltd concerning a Scottish Government guarantee relating to bonds issued for Sanjeev Gupta’s business interests.

The claimants contended that the article alleged that Greensill Capital and its founder, Alexander Greensill, knowingly provided false information and had committed market abuse. Reuters contended that the article referred only to the company, stated that a false statement had been made, and left open how it had arisen and whether any offence had been committed.

On an application ordered as a preliminary issue, the court determined the article’s natural and ordinary meaning.

1. Meaning assessed as a whole. The court applied the principles in Koutsogiannis v The Random House Group Ltd [2020] 4 WLR 25. The words complained of had to be read in the context of the publication as a whole. No evidence beyond the publication itself was admissible for this exercise, subject only to narrow exceptions.
2. Reference to the individual. The article’s references to “Greensill” would ordinarily be understood as references to the corporate claimant. The biographical material about Alexander Greensill did not connect him personally with the alleged false statement or market abuse. Any understanding based on readers’ special knowledge of the company would be a matter of innuendo, not natural and ordinary meaning.
3. Effect of denials and context. The article clearly alleged that the company had provided false information about approval of a Scottish Government guarantee. But it also reported the company’s denial, its explanation that the update was based on information from GFG, and conflicting statements from other participants. Applying the reasoning concerning “bane and antidote” in Mark v Associated Newspapers [2002] EMLR 38, the article did not compel the reader to reject the denials as lies.
4. Level of meaning. The reference to market abuse identified the significance of knowledge of falsity but did not allege that the company was guilty of that offence. The article did not provide clear grounds to suspect knowing falsity. Consistently with Poroshenko v BBC [2019] EWHC 213 (QB), it conveyed that there were grounds to investigate how the false statement had been made, whether it was knowingly false, and whether any market abuse offence had been committed.
5. The meaning was therefore that Greensill Capital had provided false information to bond market investors and brokers, and that there were grounds to investigate the circumstances, its knowledge, and any market abuse. Both limbs were defamatory at common law. The court did not determine whether the serious-harm requirement under section 1 of the Defamation Act 2013 was satisfied.

The claim was a first-instance libel action. Master Brown ordered determination of the article’s natural and ordinary meaning as a preliminary issue on 10 February 2020.