“I did not want to give Fozia Rashid the self-satisfaction of terminating the call – I slammed my phone down so hard I broke it. I felt so affronted and so filled with anger that I am certain I would have physically attacked her if she had been anywhere near me. I truly am not of that nature and so, surely, this should act as a wake up call to the Borough as to the capacity she has for offending people. Persons appointed to posts in the fields of public protection and community safety should excel in their interpersonal and communication skills. Those qualities were obviously not the determining factor in this appointment and, quite frankly, I feel she is a liability. How can Slough Borough Council sustain this position? They have a duty of care and should seek to take action out of respect for the council tax payer who pays to maintain these amenities, respect for park wardens who work so hard in them, and for people like myself who make the effort. Instead, Fozia Rashid only sought to ridicule and vilify me.”
“Jane wants every avenue explored and feels that Fozia has no knowledge of legal options open to L.A. Stunned that Fozia is in the post. Stated she would have hit Fozia if she could. Wants her out of the post.”
“I have requested that Jane Clift’s name be added to the register of violent persons following repeated threats of violence towards a member of staff. Whilst we will continue to provide her with our normal range of services, I would ask that any officer making a site visit, or conducting a face-to-face interview with Ms Clift, does so in the presence of an accompanying officer. Equally, any member of staff receiving a phone call from Ms Clift should make a full file note of that conversation, including Ms Clift’s manner.”
“The email [and a similar plea was made in relation to the Register] was published on an occasion of qualified privilege in that the second defendant had a duty to send the email namely to protect the safety of the first defendant’s staff and the staff of its Partnership Organisations, which staff had a corresponding interest in receiving the same.”
“38. 1. [The defendants] have a qualified privilege defence in relation to publication to employees of the Council who were ‘customer facing staff’ (and their managers) being employees in the following departments: Trading Standards, Neighbourhood Enforcement and Community Safety. 2. [The defendants] do not have a qualified privilege defence in relation to publication to employees of the Council who were ‘customer facing staff’ nor their managers, being employees in the following departments: Licence, Food and Safety, Children and Education Services. 3. [The defendants] do not have a qualified privilege defence in relation to community wardens, trade union officials, anyone in the four partner organisations.”
“39. … Itmatters not at all whether Mr Stobbs and the Bar Council are properly to be regarded as owing a duty to the Bar to rule on questions of professional conduct such as arose here, or as sharing with the Bar a common interest in maintaining professional standards. What matters is that the relationship between them is an established one which plainly requires the flow of free and frank communications in both directions on all questions relevant to the discharge of the Bar Council's functions.”
“149. This is a case of an existing and established relationship, going back many years, between the mother's family and the Social Services Department of the Council. Accordingly, Kearns supports the following conclusion. The fact that the information in the words complained of was not verified (or not ‘evidence based’) could not take the case outside the protection of qualified privilege unless [the authors of the report] were deliberately publishing what they knew to be outside the official guidance known to them. 150. It is true that the duties of the Council in this case (which were being performed on their behalf by [the authors]) were public law duties imposed upon them by the Children Act. If the words complained of are published to [a] person to whom there is no duty to publish, or at a time, or in other circumstances when there is no duty to publish, the consequences of that do call for consideration. 151. However, in my judgment what matters is that the relationship between the Defendants and the publishees was an established one which plainly requires the flow of free and frank communications in both directions on all questions relevant to the discharge of the Council's functions.”
“When, in the course of performing its public duties, a public body (such as a police force) comes into possession of information relating to a member of the public, being information not generally available and potentially damaging to that member of the public if disclosed, the body ought not to disclose such information save for the purpose of and to the extent necessary for performance of its public duty or enabling some other public body to perform its public duty. … The principle, as I think, rests on a fundamental rule of good public administration, which the law must recognise and if necessary enforce.”
“In so far as the requisite duty needed also to measure up to human rights considerations, [the Chief Constable’s] publications, defamatory of [the claimants], were not in the circumstances proportionate to the legitimate aim [the Chief Constable] was pursuing. But I think that that is really saying the same thing in a different language.”
“The principle upon which these cases are founded is a universal one, that the public convenience is to be preferred to private interests, and that communications which the interests of society require to be unfettered may freely be made by persons acting honestly without actual malice, notwithstanding that they involve relevant comments condemnatory of individuals.”
“It was in the public interest that the rules of our law relating to privileged occasions and privileged communications were introduced, because it is in the public interest that persons should be allowed to speak freely on occasions when it is their duty to speak, and to tell all they know or believe, or on occasions when it is necessary to speak in the protection of some (self or) common interest.”
“In general, an action lies for the malicious publication of statements which are false in fact, and injurious to the character of another, and the law considers such publication as malicious, unless it is fairly made by a person in the discharge of some public or private duty whether legal or moral, or in the conduct of his own affairs, in matters where his interest is concerned. In such cases the occasion prevents the inference of malice which the law draws from unauthorised communications, and affords a qualified defence depending on the absence of actual malice. If fairly warranted by any reasonable occasion or exigency, and honestly made, such communications are protected for the common convenience and welfare of society.”
“A privileged occasion is … an occasion where the person who makes a communication has an interest, or a duty, legal, social or moral, to make it to the person to whom it is made, and the person to whom it is so made has a corresponding interest or duty to receive it. This reciprocity is essential.”
“1. When is verification a relevant circumstance in determining whether or not a defamatory communication is protected by qualified privilege? That, in the last analysis, is the question raised by this appeal.”
“The argument, as it seems to me, has been much bedevilled by the use of the terms “common interest” and “duty-interest”, for all the world as if these are clear-cut categories and any particular case is instantly recognisable as falling within one or other of them. … To my mind an altogether more helpful categorisation is to be found by distinguishing between, on the one hand, cases where the communicator and the communicatee are in an existing and established relationship (irrespective of whether within that relationship the communications between them relate to reciprocal interests or reciprocal duties or a mixture of both) and, on the other hand, cases where no such relationship has been established and the communication is between strangers (or at any rate is volunteered otherwise than by reference to their relationship).”
“32. One searches the authorities in vain for comparable statements in the context of communications made between those in an established relationship which, by its very nature, involves reciprocal interests and/or duties.”
“45. I agree. The question of whether the existing relationship in any particular case gives rise to a common interest or to a duty/interest situation will often produce a somewhat sterile dispute, and certainly in the present appeal it is not the crucial issue. Whichever of those two categories is said to apply, the fact remains that each of them normally presupposes an existing relationship between the person who made the statement sued on and the recipient of it. In such a case, so long as the statement is fairly warranted by the occasion, and is made in the absence of malice, it will be protected by qualified privilege, irrespective of the degree of investigation or verification carried out by the maker of the statement and irrespective of whether one categorises the situation as one of common interest or of duty and corresponding interest.”
“15. … Sometimes it is possible from the surrounding circumstances to come to a definitive conclusion without the need to resolve factual disputes: see e.g. Kearns ... That was a case of what one might call “off the peg” privilege, where the issue can be resolved simply by looking at the relationship between the parties and the subject-matter of the relevant communication,” the emphasis being added by me. I agree. In particular I agree that it is “sometimes” only that it is possible to look to the special relationship and no more, and, to coin his graphic phrase, to buy “off the peg”, noting as one does so, the absence of any sign above the clothes’ rail that “One size fits all”
“Q. You had no need whatever to share that information? A. I am going to be honest and I think this is something for you guys to sort out about the legal aspects of it.”
“58. … the police, as a public body, ought not generally to disclose information which comes into their possession relating to a member of the public, being information not generally available and potentially damaging to that member of the public, except for the purpose of and to the extent necessary for the performance of their public duty. The principle rests on a fundamental rule of good public administration which the law must recognise. … 63. … Disclosure of damaging information about individuals requires specific public interest justification. Ill-considered and indiscriminate disclosure is scarcely likely to measure up to this standard.”
“82. In my opinion the common law, with its own system of limitation periods and remedies, should be allowed to stand on its own feet side by side with the alternative remedy.”
“136. … To the extent that articles 2 and 3 of the Convention and sections 7 and 8 of the Human Rights Act already provide for claims to be brought in these cases, it is quite simply unnecessary now to develop the common law to provide a parallel cause of action.”
“The effect of my decision has been to ‘involve application by the court of an objective test of relevance to every part of the defamatory matter published’. That is what Mr Tomlinson’s submission pursuant to Huang required: see para [70] above. And this also is what Lord Diplock accepted was logical. But at least in some cases, as Lord Diplock observed, that may make the ‘protection afford by the privilege … illusory’. When reaching my decision I had in mind that it represents a departure from Horrocks v Lowe. I considered that this departure was justified and required by HRA. The words complained ofin Horrocks v Lowe were a slander spoken at the meeting of a Town Council. They related to the plaintiff’s conduct in business and local politics. But the words of Lord Diplock have always been taken as applying to all cases of common law qualified privilege.”
“My Lords, as a general rule English law gives effect to the ninth commandment that a man shall not speak evil falsely of his neighbour. It supplies a temporal sanction: if he cannot prove that defamatory matter which he published was true, he is liable in damages to whomever he has defamed, except where the publication is oral only, causes no damage and falls outside the categories of slander actionable per se. The public interest that the law should provide an effective means whereby a man can vindicate his reputation against calumny has nevertheless to be accommodated to the competing public interest in permitting men to communicate frankly and freely with one another about matters in respect of which the law recognises that they have a duty to perform or an interest to protect in doing so. What is published in good faith on matters of these kinds is published on a privileged occasion. It is not actionable even though it be defamatory and turns out to be untrue. With some exceptions which are irrelevant to the instant appeal, the privilege is not absolute but qualified. It is lost if the occasion which gives rise to it is misused. For in all cases of qualified privilege there is some special reason of public policy why the law accords immunity from suit - the existence of some public or private duty, whether legal or moral, on the part of the maker of the defamatory statement which justifies his communicating it or of some interest of his own which he is entitled to protect by doing so. If he uses the occasion for some other reason he loses the protection of the privilege.”
“There may be evidence of the defendant's conduct upon occasions other than that protected by the privilege which justify the inference that upon the privileged occasion too his dominant motive in publishing what he did was personal spite or some other improper motive, even although he believed it to be true. But where, as in the instant case, conduct extraneous to the privileged occasion itself is not relied on, and the only evidence of improper motive is the content of the defamatory matter itself or the steps taken by the defendant to verify its accuracy, there is only one exception to the rule that in order to succeed the plaintiff must show affirmatively that the defendant did not believe it to be true or was indifferent to its truth or falsity. Juries should be instructed and judges should remind themselves that this burden of affirmative proof is not one that is lightly satisfied. The exception is where what is published incorporates defamatory matter that is not really necessary to the fulfilment of the particular duty or the protection of the particular interest upon which the privilege is founded. Logically it might be said that such irrelevant matter falls outside the privilege altogether. But if this were so it would involve application by the court of an objective test of relevance to every part of the defamatory matter published on the privileged occasion; whereas, as everyone knows, ordinary human beings vary in their ability to distinguish that which is logically relevant from that which is not and few, apart from lawyers, have had any training which qualifies them to do so. So the protection afforded by the privilege would be illusory if it were lost in respect of any defamatory matter which upon logical analysis could be shown to be irrelevant to the fulfilment of the duty or the protection of the right upon which the privilege was founded. As Lord Dunedin pointed out in Adam v Ward [1917] A.C. 309, 326-327 the proper rule as respects irrelevant defamatory matter incorporated in a statement made on a privileged occasion is to treat it as one of the factors to be taken into consideration in deciding whether, in all the circumstances, an inference that the defendant was actuated by express malice can properly be drawn. As regards irrelevant matter the test is not whether it is logically relevant but whether, in all the circumstances, it can be inferred that the defendant either did not believe it to be true or, though believing it to be true, realised that it had nothing to do with the particular duty or interest on which the privilege was based, but nevertheless seized the opportunity to drag in irrelevant defamatory matter to vent his personal spite, or for some other improper motive. Here, too, judges and juries should be slow to draw this inference.”