Decided 1917 Ruling court House of Lords | End date 1917 | |
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Adam v. Ward was a case heard in 1917 by the House of Lords 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.
The main point of the case concerned the distribution of information; specifically, whether defamatory truths can be published or are unable to be published (as is the case with defamatory lies), and whether such situations are privileged. I.e. if said action were performed out of malice or not, if it were, the case would be that the situation was not privileged and the person undertaking said action did not have the privilege to do so. Lord Atkinson ruled:
Later uses of the ruling
In Reynolds v Times Newspapers Limited and Others, 1999, Lord Atkinson's quote was cited to define what a privileged occasion is.