To think most of Mumsnet do not understand libel?

[antelopevalley]

It is really common on here now to see an accusation that what an MNer said is libellous. It rarely is.
Libel is not a criminal offence, it is a civil wrong. Someone has to take you to court.

Libel refers to damaging someone's reputation and character and is based on stating as fact, things that are untrue.
So if I said someone famous who is known to be in a happy marriage was having an affair with someone else, and that was false and I said it maliciously, it would probably be potentially libellous i.e. that famous person could take me to court. Although unless you have an online following, that is very unlikely to happen.

But if I said the famous person was sleazy and I would not trust them, they seem the kind to pretend to have a happy marriage in public while having multiple affairs, that is unlikely to be libellous. It is my opinion and is not presented as a fact. It is the second kind of statement that some MNers keep saying is libellous.

You can say legally that you consider a named politician or famous person to be untrustworthy, sleazy, a bit thick, etc. It is opinion.

So please stop telling people that what they have said is libellous. The only potentially libellous comments I have ever seen on MN (rare) are deleted when reported. The matter is just an opinion that you may or may not agree with.

I am working class. I had never heard anyone use the word disingenuous until MN. In my world people just say you are lying.

I can't actually believe you typed this, and let it stand.

You hadn't heard the word; it's offensive to link that with the fact you are working-class. I'm perfectly sure other working class people may have heard the word & some middle class people may not have.

Calling Jimmy Saville a paedophile would not be damaging his reputation even if he was alive. Because he has no reputation left to damage.

You are so wrong it's unbelievable.

As PP have said, it's about being prepared to back up your claims with evidence.

You may well think JS reputation (if alive) would be unaffected by allegations of paedophilia - you have no certainty that the courts would share that belief. Whatever about his wider reputation, calling someone a particular term with such seriously negative connotations is unlikely to be blithely accepted as fine to do.

You haven't a clue

With evidence to support that belief.

I've read this and I'm interested in how this works in practice.

Say I work in a PR company and I hear someone say Harry Styles is a rapist. So I then repeat or write that Harry Styles is a rapist. But it turns out that I misheard and they were actually talking about Harry Secombe, have I then committed slander or libel or am I protected and an apology is enough, even if Harry Styles suffered financial loss or had a damaged reputation.

For clarity, neither Harry Styles nor Harry Secombe (whom I loved) is/was a rapist. I'm just using them as an example.

But actually say someone read the post wrong and actually believed that HS was a rapist, could they be sued? I've read posters on MN calling famous people rapists and paedophiles and they genuinely believe they are based on things other people have said. Are they protected too?

Surely the confusion is between slander and libel. But then if some people think there is a piece of furniture called “a chest of DRAWS” or even “a CHESTER DRAWS”, it’s unlikely they are going to be able to differentiate between words or terms.

🤷🏻‍♀️

Actually, I’m not sure you understand.

Calling Jimmy Saville a paedophile would not be damaging his reputation even if he was alive. Because he has no reputation left to damage. you’re wrong.

If JS had had no reputation to protect he wouldn’t have been laid in state, had the funeral he did, had hundreds and hundreds of people filing past his coffin.

Incidentally after his death there were several threads on here voicing people’s thoughts about him and they were all removed as being disrespectful.

Whatever you or others may have believed or known about him, the fact is he did still have a reputation which could be damaged had these allegations simply been made on an online platform while he was still alive.

I’m intrigued though about why you have such a bee in your bonnet about this. Have you recently had a post deleted per chance?

Let’s keep it nice and simple:

Defamation is split into two legal bases that a person can sue for: slander and libel. Slander is defamation of a person through a transient form of communication, generally speech. Libel is defamation of a person through a permanent form of communication, mostly the written word.”
(6 Nov 2019)

Let’s keep it nice and simple:

“Defamation is split into two legal bases that a person can sue for: slander and libel. Slander is defamation of a person through a transient form of communication, generally speech. Libel is defamation of a person through a permanent form of communication, mostly the written word.”
(6 Nov 2019)

Ironic that most (not all) posters - including the OP - don’t understand libel & slander in the UK at all.

You can’t sue anyone for libel or slander here. People tell lies about others all the time…that’s just life and free speech is more protective than people realise. You can only sue if you’ve been actively defamed - and you would need to prove it.

Defamation occurs when you’ve suffered harm because of something that’s been said or published about you. That harm could be financial - you’ve lost work or been sacked - or your reputation has been so damaged that it’s impossible for you to live happily or peacefully in the same way as before - injury to feelings. If either if these things have occured, you’re entitled to claim compensation through the courts (and other potential remedy such as
retraction).

The burden is on you to prove defamation, you don’t actually have to prove that you’ve been lied about. The defence need to try and show (in the first instance) either that you haven’t been defamed to any serious degree or, if you have, it was justified.

Once it’s been established that you have been defamed, then the burden shifts to the defence to,prove either that what they said or published was the truth or that they had very good reasons to believe it was. You’ll obviously be able to challenge their evidence with your own arguments or witnesses.

OP - I’m not sure why you brought up “malice”. I suspect you’ve been watching Depp v Heard and have misunderstood “actual malice”, which is a legal burden in the US for public figures to clamber over if they sue for defamation. It has nothing to do with maliciousness in the every day sense of the word, but means “with knowledge”.

Calling someone “sleazy” is unlikely to be defamatory in and of itself. You’d need to qualify it with a specific reason for why you think that….”I think Joe is sleazy” is opinion usually. “I think Joe is sleazy because he’s a rapist” could be defamatory.

The slander and libel distinction is largely irrelevant here since anything posted on a website is by definition libel. The practical distinction is pretty limited though.

The bigger issue is that OP started a thread about how people don’t understand libel while demonstrating that she has no real understanding about, for example, the defence of honest opinion.

Which of course is dangerous - if someone followed her claims and acted accordingly they could well find themselves in a legally precarious position.

My list provided a general definition for the benefit of people who clearly do not know.

This forum is not the centre of the universe, incidentally…

I understand the difference between libel and slander, but I was posting about Mumsnet so libel is the relevant issue.

@DaisyMcTitface I had understood the with malice to mean deliberately. So the person knew what they were saying was false, or they were reckless about the truth of the issue.
But I am not a lawyer.

There’s not really any need to specify “with malice” or “maliciously” - that’s already factored in.

If a court finds that someone has been defamed and that the defendant/s either knew they were lying or (more likely and more common) had absolutely no good reason to believe that what they said was true (and it turned out not to be) then there’s no need to investigate their motivation further…which deciding on the level of “maliciousness” would require. If the claimant has specific evidence of malicious intent then that’s a good thing to put before the court, but “with malice” isn’t a necessary finding.

@DaisyMcTitface I accept your point. But as I explained I did not mean maliciousness. That is not what with malice means.

Wow! That's really interesting. I had assumed it wouldn't be a relative thing, but it does make sense

The defence us that it is substantially true (s2(1)). Not that you believe it is true. There are of course other defences. But that was, for example, what Coleen Rooney relied on. That Rebecca Vardy did, in fact, leak the stories. And why she won. Terrible waste of money, great example case for us to look at!

Sure but the distinction is largely irrelevant, since for most relevant purposes there is no practical distinction between the law on slander and on libel. There are some but much smaller than in the past.

Most people posting definitions of libel and slander tend to want to sound clever but without adding much of relevance.

I think OPs point about people slinging accusations about is a good one. I was on another SM platform recently and someone (who is often quick to be offended) said a poster had defamed them. I read the relevant post several times and there was nothing in it even capable of being defamatory!

I think OP you raise a valid point about the understanding of libel laws. The cost of bringing a libel action makes it a rich person's option only. It also seems to me a way rich people can bully others into silence, Robert Maxwell being an example of someone who used libel laws thus.

I know pedantic people like me are annoying, but you said “maliciously”, not “with malice”.

”With malice’ just means you know you’re doing something wrong - or don’t care either way - which is always relevant in any legal proceeding. So you’re right on that front.

Lots of people have been going on about “actual malice’ since Depp v Heard without knowing what it means, so I was just clarifying that wasn’t the case here.

If you had good reason to believe it was true you could use honest opinion or public interest as a defence. Neither of those require the facts to be actually true.

A case that better illustrates defamation is the one against Elon Musk a few years ago.

For no sensible reason he called a man on Twitter, “pedo guy” and wouldn’t apologise.

The man sued & on the face of it had a good case since there was no evidence at all he was a “pedo” and Musk had no reason to suppose he was. But he lost the case….because he couldn’t show that he’d been “defamed” or had suffered undue harm as a result even though the allegation was clearly untrue.

I’ve always thought Musk behaved despicably over this. He should just have said sorry and bumged the man a few hundred grand not forced him into court action.

There would certainly have been a different outcome in England. A claiming doesn’t need to demonstrate actual harm (unless the claimant is a business in which case financial harm must be demonstrated). Just probable harm using the reasonable person test.

So he wouldn’t need to demonstrate that anyone actually thought less of him or that it caused any material harm - just that a reasonable person probably would think less of him if they heard him called ‘Pedo Man’ which is a much easier threshold to reach.

And wasn't it one of the divers involved in the thai cave rescue? He's such an idiot (musk that is)

I’m not invested in the ins and outs of your tedious, long winded posts. Trying to sound clever? Most school kids are aware of the difference between spoken and written defamation so it’s hardly “clever” - though people here might think that, of course. Lol