Direct Accident Management Limited & Anor v Newsquest Specialist Media Limited

In determining meaning in a defamation claim, the court must identify the single natural and ordinary meaning conveyed to the hypothetical reasonable reader reading the publication once, viewed as a whole and in its context. The court may select the correct meaning independently of the parties’ submissions, subject to the pleaded-meaning limit. Context may reduce an apparent allegation under the repetition rule to a lower Chase level, but mitigation must be assessed against the publication as a whole. Whether words convey fact or opinion is a question of substance assessed from the perspective of the ordinary reasonable reader. Descriptive terms such as dishonesty, fraud, excessive or exaggerated costs may convey fact where the publication supplies insufficient detail to identify the basis of the allegation.

The claimants, a credit hire organisation and a law firm, brought a libel claim against the publisher of two Insurance Times articles concerning a legal action involving £400,000 in credit hire charges. The parties agreed preliminary issues concerning the articles’ natural and ordinary meanings, whether those meanings were defamatory, and whether the words conveyed fact or opinion.

The court considered separately the first article, which identified the first claimant as responsible for the charges and described it as an outlier practising poor conduct, and the second article, which alleged fraud by the first claimant and raised potential conflicts and referral concerns involving both claimants.

1. Applicable principles. The court applied the settled approach distilled in Koutsogiannis. Meaning was assessed by reference to the single natural and ordinary meaning conveyed to the hypothetical reasonable reader, reading each article once and taking account of its context, presentation and medium. The court was not bound by the meanings advanced by the parties, subject to the rule that it could not adopt a meaning more injurious than the claimant’s pleaded meaning.
2. In applying the Chase levels and repetition rule, the court considered the publication as a whole. Material which might otherwise mitigate an allegation had to be assessed in context. The first article’s discussion of industry practices was capable of informing the reader’s understanding of the conduct attributed to DAM, notwithstanding that DAM was identified only in the concluding section.
3. The first article bore the meaning that DAM had sought to charge £400,000 for a replacement vehicle, did not participate in sector self-regulation, exploited the lack of regulation to charge excessive costs using poor practices, and was particularly bad in this respect. The meaning was defamatory and factual.
4. The second article bore the meaning that DAM was guilty of fraud in charging exaggerated and grossly excessive credit hire costs, particularly in the unregulated sector. It also conveyed reasonable grounds to suspect a conflict of interest between DAM and Bond Turner, improper or non-transparent referrals by DAM, and corresponding non-transparent conduct by Bond Turner. These meanings were defamatory and factual. The cautious wording concerning Bond Turner produced a Chase level 2 meaning rather than a finding of guilt.
5. The court rejected the submission that references to fraud concerned only the driver in the underlying accident. The articles directed the allegations at DAM. The statements concerning excessive, exaggerated and grossly excessive charges were factual because the publications did not provide sufficient detail to make them evaluative opinion.