Cartus Corporation Cartus Ltd v Siddell & Anor
2014
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
United Kingdom
CORAM
- MR JUSTICE NICOL
Areas of Law
- Civil Procedure
- Human Rights Law
- Tort Law
2014
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The case involves a dispute over an interim injunction granted to prevent the publication of allegedly defamatory documents titled 'The Ugly Truth' and a covering letter. The Defendants argued against the intention to publish the documents and claimed Truth and Qualified Privilege as defences. Justice Nicol concluded that the Claimants did not show sufficient evidence of intended publication to warrant continuing or converting the interim injunction to a final one. Key legal principles discussed include the requirement for evidence in granting quia timet injunctions, the need to plead specific defamatory words, and the general principle against prior restraint of publication.
Judgment
Mr Justice Nicol :
On 20 th March 2014 Supperstone J. granted an interim injunction to restrain publication of a document entitled “The Ugly Truth” and a covering letter to customers of the Claimants. It is the Claimants’ case that the documents would have been defamatory of them and imminent publication was threatened. The application was made without notice to the Defendants. The injunction was granted for 7 days in anticipation that the Claimants would apply for its continuation on notice to the Defendants. The Claimants did so, but the hearing of their application was postponed until it came before me on 24 th June 2014.
On 10 th June 2014 the Claimants issued a further application notice. By then, the Defendants had served a Defence (signed by the 1 st but not the 2 nd Defendant) which pleaded Truth and Qualified Privilege. In their further application, the Claimants asked the Court to rule on the meanings of “The Ugly Truth” and its covering letter, to strike out the defences of Truth and Qualified Privilege and to grant a final injunction in an amended form. However, the Defence also said that the Defendants no longer intended to publish “The Ugly Truth” now. On 23 rd June 2014 (and so the day before the hearing) the Defendants served a proposed Amended Defence (which was signed by both Defendants). This recast the meanings of “The Ugly Truth” and the covering letter which the Defendants were prepared to defend as true and repeated that any such publication would be covered by qualified privilege. The Amended Defence continued by saying that any words which the Defendants did publish would go no further than to make certain imputations to which it will be necessary for me to return. Neither the original Defence nor the Amended Defence referred to the covering letter, but, in the course of his oral submissions to me, Mr Cohen, on behalf of the Defendants, said that the same applied to that as well.
In brief summary, Mr Cohen’s position was that, in view of the Defendants’ present position, it would be an arid exercise to rule on the meanings of “The Ugly Truth” and the proposed covering letter, but, if I was against him on that, the meanings of those documents which the Defendants would wish to defend as true were correct, the pleading of Truth was sufficiently particularised at this stage and should not be struck out. Likewise, the pleading of qualified privilege was arguable and should not be struck out. Since the Defendants had arguab