| Cherneskey v Armadale Publishers Ltd |
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Hearing: 12–13 December 1977
Judgment: 21 November 1978 |
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| Full case name | Morris T Cherneskey v Armadale Publishers Limited and Sterling King |
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| Citations | [1979] 1 SCR 1067 |
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| Prior history | APPEAL from Cherneskey v Armadale Publishers Ltd 1974 CanLII 984 (26 July 1974) |
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| Ruling | Appeal allowed and trial judgment restored |
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| Court Membership |
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Chief Justice: Bora Laskin
Puisne Justices: Ronald Martland, Roland Ritchie, Wishart Spence, Louis-Philippe Pigeon, Brian Dickson, Jean Beetz, Willard Estey, Yves Pratte |
| Reasons given |
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| Majority | Martland J, joined by Laskin CJ and Ritchie, Pigeon, Beetz and Pratte JJ |
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| Dissent | Dickson J, joined by Spence and Estey JJ |
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Cherneskey v Armadale Publishers Ltd, [1979] 1 SCR 1067 is a leading decision by the Supreme Court of Canada on the use of a defence of fair comment against an action for libel.
The Supreme Court of Canada is the highest court of Canada, the final court of appeals in the Canadian justice system. The court grants permission to between 40 and 75 litigants each year to appeal decisions rendered by provincial, territorial and federal appellate courts. Its decisions are the ultimate expression and application of Canadian law and binding upon all lower courts of Canada, except to the extent that they are overridden or otherwise made ineffective by an Act of Parliament or the Act of a provincial legislative assembly pursuant to section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Fair comment is a legal term for a common law defense in defamation cases. It is referred to as honest comment in some countries.
An action for libel was brought by a Morris Cherneskey, an alderman for Saskatoon City Council, against the local Star-Phoenix newspaper for publishing a letter written by two law students criticizing Cherneskey for supporting the creation of an Alcoholic Rehabilitation Centre in a residential section of Saskatoon.
Saskatoon City Council is the governing body of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. The council consists of the mayor and ten councillors representing wards. The current council sits between 2016 and 2020. The last civic election was held on October 26, 2016. The mayor and councillors were elected to three-year terms until 2012, when the terms were extended to four years.
In a six to three decision the Court held that a defence of fair comment is not possible when the editors themselves did not agree with the opinion of the letter and when there was no evidence that the authors of the letter submitted the letter in good faith. The Court stated that:
- The freedom of the journalist is an ordinary part of the freedom of the subject, and to whatever lengths the subject in general may go, so also may the journalist, but, apart from statute law, his privilege is no other and no higher. The responsibilities which attach to his power in the dissemination of printed matter may, and in the case of a conscientious journalist do, make him more careful; but the range of his assertions, his criticisms, or his comments is as wide as, and no wider than, that of any other subject. No privilege attaches to his position.
Defamation, calumny, vilification, or traducement is the communication of a false statement that harms the reputation of, depending on the law of the country, an individual, business, product, group, government, religion, or nation.
McDonald's Corporation v Steel & Morris [1997] EWHC QB 366, known as "the McLibel case", was an English lawsuit for libel filed by McDonald's Corporation against environmental activists Helen Steel and David Morris over a factsheet critical of the company. Each of two hearings in English courts found some of the leaflet's contested claims to be libellous and others to be true. The partial nature of the victory, the David-and-Goliath nature of the case, and the drawn-out litigation embarrassed McDonald's.
Hill v Church of Scientology of Toronto February 20, 1995- July 20, 1995. 2 S.C.R. 1130 was a libel case against the Church of Scientology, in which the Supreme Court of Canada interpreted Ontario's libel law in relation to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that established the actual malice standard that must be met for press reports about public officials to be considered libel. The decision defended free reporting of the civil rights campaigns in the southern United States. It is one of the key decisions supporting the freedom of the press. The actual malice standard requires that a plaintiff alleging defamation who is a public official or public figure prove that the publisher of the statement in question knew that the statement was false or acted in reckless disregard of its truth or falsity. Because of the extremely high burden of proof on the plaintiff, and the difficulty of proving the defendant's knowledge and intentions, such claims by public figures rarely prevail.
Parliamentary privilege is a legal immunity enjoyed by members of certain legislatures, in which legislators are granted protection against civil or criminal liability for actions done or statements made in the course of their legislative duties. It is common in countries whose constitutions are based on the Westminster system.
Sedition and seditious libel were criminal offences under English common law, and are still criminal offences in Canada. Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order: if the statement is in writing or some other permanent form it is seditious libel. Libel denotes a printed form of communication such as writing or drawing.
Reynolds v Times Newspapers Ltd was a House of Lords case in English defamation law concerning qualified privilege for publication of defamatory statements in the public interest. The case provided the Reynolds defence, which could be raised where it was clear that the journalist had a duty to publish an allegation even if it turned out to be wrong.
The criminal statutes protecting nobility from criticism in 16th and 17th century England eventually evolved into various categories of political libel. Cases of political libel and eventually damages actions were handled by the infamous Star Chamber until its abolition in 1641. By the end of that century, many elements of the common law of libel had been established.
Sir David Eady is a retired High Court judge in England and Wales. As a judge, he is known for having presided over many high-profile libel and privacy cases.
Neutral reportage is a common law defense against libel and defamation lawsuits usually involving the media republishing unproven accusations about public figures. It is a limited exception to the common law rule that one who repeats a defamatory statement is just as guilty as the first person who published it.
Modern libel and slander laws, as implemented in many Commonwealth nations as well as in the United States and in the Republic of Ireland, are originally descended from English defamation law. The history of defamation law in England is somewhat obscure; civil actions for damages seem to have been relatively frequent as far back as the reign of Edward I (1272–1307), though it is unknown whether any generally applicable criminal process was in place. The first fully reported case in which libel is affirmed generally to be punishable at common law was tried during the reign of James I (1603-1625). Scholars frequently attribute strict English defamation law to James I's outlawing of dueling. From that time, both the criminal and civil remedies have been found in full operation.
The origins of the United States' defamation laws pre-date the American Revolution; one influential case in 1734 involved John Peter Zenger and established precedent that "The Truth" is an absolute defense against charges of libel. Though the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect freedom of the press, for most of the history of the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court failed to use it to rule on libel cases. This left libel laws, based upon the traditional "Common Law" of defamation inherited from the English legal system, mixed across the states. The 1964 case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, however, radically changed the nature of libel law in the United States by establishing that public officials could win a suit for libel only when they could prove the media outlet in question knew either that the information was wholly and patently false or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not". Later Supreme Court cases barred strict liability for libel and forbid libel claims for statements that are so ridiculous as to be patently false. Recent cases have added precedent on defamation law and the Internet.
Canadian defamation law refers to defamation law as it stands in both common law and civil law jurisdictions in Canada. As with most Commonwealth jurisdictions, Canada follows English law on defamation issues.
Absolute privilege is a complete defence to an action for defamation in English law. If the defence of absolute privilege applies it is irrelevant that a defendant has acted with malice, knew information was false or acted solely to damage the reputation of the plaintiff. Absolute privilege can be deployed in a narrow range of cases. Statements made in judicial proceedings are protected as are communications between a solicitor and their client. The Bill of Rights of 1689 provides that proceedings of the Parliament of the United Kingdom are also covered by absolute privilege.
Adam v. Ward was a 1919 House of Lords case concerning the legal theories of qualified privilege and that of the constitutional defence. Qualified privilege is "a defence to the publication of defamatory statements which may be false but which warrant protection from an action in defamation because the occasion on which they are made demands that they be made freely with the prospect of litigation removed." The constitutional defence varies from country to country in that it is based on the constitutional law of said country.
Grant v Torstar Corp, [2009] 3 S.C.R. 640, 2009 SCC 61, is a 2009 Supreme Court of Canada decision on the defences to the tort of defamation. The Supreme Court ruled that the law of defamation should give way to the rights of a party to speak on matters of public interest, provided the party exercises a certain level of responsibility in verifying the potentially defamatory facts. This decision recognizes a defence of responsible communication on matters of public interest.
The Libel trial of Joseph Howe was a court case heard 2 March 1835 in which newspaper editor Joseph Howe was charged with seditious libel by civic politicians in Nova Scotia. Howe's victory in court was considered monumental at the time. In the first issue of the Novascotian following the acquittal, Howe claimed that "the press of Nova-Scotia is Free." Scholars, such as John Ralston Saul, have argued that Howe's libel victory established the fundamental basis for the freedom of the press in Canada. Historian Barry Cahill writes that the trial was significant in colonial legal history because it was a long delayed replay of the Zenger case (1734).
British Chiropractic Association (BCA) v. Singh was an influential libel action in England and Wales, widely credited as a catalytic event in the libel reform campaign which saw all parties at the 2010 general election making manifesto commitments to libel reform and passing of the reformed law ‘Defamation Act 2013’ by the British Parliament in April 2013.
The Defamation Act 2013 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which reformed English defamation law on issues of the right to freedom of expression and the protection of reputation. It also comprised a response to perceptions that the law as it stood was giving rise to libel tourism and other inappropriate claims.
