Expert Witness Journal Issue 65 February 2026 - Flipbook - Page 25
The Court of Appeal also reduced the claimants’
damages to £45,000 each, citing mitigating
factors such as Mr Fox’s deletion of the tweets
and clari昀椀cations given in interviews, as well as
proportionality.
Comment
These two cases highlight the practical realities of
the serious harm test under the Defamation Act
2013.
Tattersall demonstrates that limited publication and
modest allegations will rarely satisfy the statutory
threshold without clear evidence of reputational
impact. Claimants must go beyond asserting hurt
feelings and show objective harm supported by facts.
Court’s reasoning
The Court of Appeal also a昀케rmed the law in cases
where the defendant is seeking to argue that the
claimant already had a bad reputation, as the
claimants had sought to do in the counterclaim. The
court rea昀케rmed the continuing relevance of the
rule in Dingle v Associated Newspapers Ltd [1964] AC
371 (HL) when assessing serious harm. Under this
rule, the defendant can’t rely on publications of the
same/similar statements by third parties to show
that the claimant already has a bad reputation and
must instead call witnesses who know the claimant
and “have had dealings with him” to give evidence
about this.
Conversely, Blake illustrates that scale and context
matter: mass dissemination of inherently damaging
allegations can justify an inference of serious harm,
even without direct evidence from readers. The
Court of Appeal’s rea昀케rmation of the Dingle rule
underscores that defendants must produce credible
witness testimony instead of relying on thirdparty publications or unrelated acts to establish a
claimant’s pre-existing bad reputation.
The court also held that, when assessing whether
there had been general harm to the claimant’s
reputation, it is not permissible to rely on acts of the
claimant to show that he already had a bad reputation
at the time the alleged libel was published.
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EXPERT WITNESS JOURNAL
23
FEBRUARY 2026
