Defamation—Qualified privilege—Public interest

Supreme Court, Lord Phillips P, Lord Brown, Lord Mance, Lord Clarke and Lord Dyson SCJJ, 21 Mar 2012

The court considered the circumstances in which a defendant may be protected from liability to a claimant in defamation under the doctrine in Reynolds v Times Newspapers Ltd [1999] 4 All ER 609.
 

James Price QC and William Bennett (instructed by Edwin Coe LLP) for the claimant. Richard Rampton QC, Heather Rogers QC and Kate Wilson (instructed by the Times Newspapers Legal Department) for the defendant.

The defendant newspaper published an article in June 2006 in which it accused the claimant, a detective sergeant of the extradition unit of the Metropolitan Police Service, of having taken money in exchange for passing information to a security firm. The article alleged that that information had been passed to Russian businessmen to forewarn them of extradition proceedings. A central aspect of the article was the statement that investigations were being