“I am disgraced, impeached, and baffled here,
Pierced to the soul with slander’s venomed spear.”
(William Shakespeare)
Here’s another warning from our courts to think twice before publishing anything defamatory, even if you genuinely believe it to be true.
To escape liability, you must show that you fall under one or other of the legal defences available to anyone sued for defamation – as a recent High Court decision illustrates perfectly.
A R500m bribe and a restaurant dinner
- A company director, in dispute with a government department over his company’s contract with it, went public with claims that a government minister was involved in soliciting a R500m bribe from him.
- Critically, he had no actual proof of the truth of these allegations, which he said were made to him by two unnamed informants over a restaurant dinner.
- Nonetheless, he spread these (hotly denied) claims far and wide – to his more than 12,000 Twitter (now “X”) followers, as well as to the listeners/viewers of a podcast, a radio interview, and two TV interviews.
Sued for R1m: “But I thought it was true”
The minister, outraged by these slanderous allegations, sued for R1m in damages.
- The director countered that he had never intended to defame the minister, that his statements amounted to “fair comment” and that he reasonably believed that his two informants were telling the truth.
- The Court was unconvinced, finding both that the statements were defamatory and that the director had made them with the necessary “intent to injure”, having taken no steps to verify the information given to him.
- Secondly, held the Court, the director could not rely on the “fair comment” defence, both because his allegations were statements of fact rather than “comment”, and because he spread them “with reckless indifference as to whether they were actually true.”
- Finally, the defence of “truth and public interest” requires that you prove both that a statement is “substantially true” and that it is published in the public interest. For the purposes of this defence, belief that the statement is true isn’t enough – it must actually be true. In this case, the director had relied on hearsay statements and had no proof to substantiate them.
- With no proof of the allegations, the Court concluded that the minister was “a victim of a vicious assault on his dignity”, and the director “in order to safeguard his commercial interests, [had] thrown unsubstantiated accusations widely, to put pressure on the government, to accede to his demands”.
Prove it’s true, or pay up
The outcome:
- The allegations were found to be both defamatory and false.
- The director’s publication of them was unlawful.
- He is liable to pay damages (with the amount to be paid, and the question of a public apology, to be determined after hearing evidence).
- He is interdicted from repeating the allegations, directly or by implication. Breach that one and he could find himself jailed for contempt of court!
- He must pay costs on the punitive attorney and client scale.
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