Askew v Morris

In Askew v Morris, the plaintiff sought to bring a defamation action against the defendants, who were involved in the publication of an article in the Herald newspaper. The plaintiff, Askew, alleged that the article contained defamatory imputations against him, and sought to prevent the defendants from striking out his statement of claim. The defendants argued that the statement of claim did not disclose a reasonable cause of action against them and that the words in question were not capable of conveying the defamatory meaning attributed to them by the plaintiff.

The court was required to decide whether the statement of claim was sufficient to allow the defamation action to proceed and whether the words in question were capable of conveying the defamatory meaning alleged by the plaintiff. The court also needed to determine whether the first and third defendants were liable for the words in question, given that they were not the original authors of the article.

The court found that the statement of claim sufficiently defined the act or condition attributed to the plaintiff and that the imputation pleaded was arguably defamatory. The court also found that the article was capable of conveying to a reasonable reader the meaning that the plaintiff had made a series of baseless allegations. However, the court held that the first defendant was not liable for any defamatory meaning that the words in question bore, as the phrase linking the reference to "local personalities" with the earlier part of the article was editorial comment by the fourth defendant, not words spoken or necessarily authorised by the first defendant. The court also held that the first defendant was not liable for words which were innocent on their face simply because they were republished by the fourth defendant in a manner or context which gave them a defamatory meaning.

The court held that the statement of claim was not so obviously untenable that it was liable to be struck out at that stage, and that the defamation action could proceed against the fourth defendant. However, the court dismissed the action against the first and third defendants.