Emmy Tayler v HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Meaning in a libel claim is determined by the single natural and ordinary meaning conveyed to the hypothetical reasonable reader. The publication must be read as a whole, in its context and having regard to its mode of publication. In a book, the court considers the broad impression made by the work as a whole.

The bane and antidote principle is not an inflexible rule. A qualifying passage may remove or materially reduce an otherwise defamatory imputation, depending on the impression made on the reasonable reader. Conduct need not be unlawful to be defamatory. An allegation may satisfy both the consensus requirement and the threshold of seriousness where it attributes sordid conduct that places children at obvious risk of abuse.

HarperCollins published a book about Jeffrey Epstein which named Emmy Tayler as the woman who arranged Epstein’s massage schedule and led a fourteen-year-old girl to a bedroom where Epstein sexually assaulted her. The publisher accepted that Tayler had been wrongly named but disputed the legal meaning and effect of the publication.

Nicklin J ordered a trial of three preliminary issues: the natural and ordinary meaning, whether that meaning was defamatory at common law, and whether the statement was fact or opinion. The central questions were whether the book imputed knowing facilitation of child abuse and whether the immediate disclaimer operated as an antidote.

1. Meaning. The court broadly accepted Tayler’s first pleaded meaning. The book conveyed that she arranged Epstein’s massage schedule in 2005, when he regularly received massages from underage girls; led Jane Doe 1, aged fourteen, to a bedroom; set up the massage table and oils; and left her knowing Epstein would shortly join her. The book conveyed that Jane was then sexually assaulted.
2. The court rejected the suggestion that Jane might have appeared older. The book’s overall impression was that Epstein sought very young girls and that the police observation that women entering the mansion appeared eighteen or older was inconsistent with what was occurring inside.
3. The book did not, however, convey that Tayler knowingly facilitated the abuse. The final sentence of the passage was an authoritative and immediate antidote. Read with the absence of any later suggestion that Tayler was complicit, it led the reasonable reader away from that conclusion.
4. Defamatory meaning. The meaning was defamatory at common law. Arranging for underage girls, some aged fourteen, to massage a man in his fifties privately in his bedroom was contrary to common, shared social values and therefore satisfied the consensus requirement. It also had a substantially adverse tendency on the way people would treat Tayler, particularly once Epstein was identified, satisfying the threshold of seriousness. The alleged conduct did not need to be unlawful.
5. Fact or opinion. The publisher accepted that the statements concerning Tayler’s role were statements of fact, not opinion. The court recorded that conclusion.