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Book review: Duncan and Neill on Defamation

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05 March 2010 / Keith Schilling
Issue: 7407 / Categories: Blogs , Media
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Since the first edition of Duncan and Neill in 1978 the libel landscape has changed dramatically and looks set to continue doing so.

Sir Brian Neill, Richard Rampton QC, Heather Rogers QC, Timothy Atkinson, Aidan Eardley

LexisNexis; 3rd edition (Aug 2009) £195.00

ISBN: 978-0406178312

Since the first edition of Duncan and Neill in 1978 the libel landscape has changed dramatically and looks set to continue doing so. 

Juries are no longer “in the position of sheep loosed on an unfenced common, with no shepherd” as Lord Bingham famously described them.

More detailed directions are now commonplace and jury awards correspondingly smaller than in their zenith in the 1980s; to the considerable relief of the popular press. Indeed juries these days are rarely permitted to make an appearance at all as by a promiscuous interpretation of s 69 of the Senior Courts Act 1981 many cases are now regarded as too “complex” for juries; similarly juries have all but been abolished in cases where the Reynolds defence is the main issue

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