Lachaux (Respondent) v Independent Print Ltd and another (Appellants)

In Lachaux v Independent Print Ltd and another, the Supreme Court was called upon to determine the threshold for what constitutes "serious harm" to a person's reputation under Section 1 of the Defamation Act 2013. The case arose from articles published in the Independent and the Evening Standard which were alleged to be defamatory of Bruno Lachaux. The lower courts had found that the articles had caused serious harm to Lachaux's reputation. The publishers appealed, arguing that the articles did not meet the threshold for being considered defamatory under the new Act. The Supreme Court held, by a majority, that the Act requires actual proof of serious harm to a claimant's reputation, not merely an inherent tendency of the words to cause such harm. The Court found that the lower courts had properly applied this test and concluded that the harm caused to Lachaux's reputation was indeed serious. The appeals were therefore dismissed.

The key issue was the proper construction of Section 1 of the Defamation Act 2013, which states that a statement is not defamatory unless it has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the claimant's reputation. The Court held that this provision requires evidence of actual serious harm, not just an assessment based on the meaning and inherent tendency of the words. This represented a change from the previous common law position, where damage to reputation was presumed from the words alone. However, the Court found that this did not amount to a revolution in the law of defamation. The Court also rejected arguments that its construction of the Act was inconsistent with other provisions relating to limitation periods and categories of slander actionable per se.