Flood v Times Newspapers Ltd [2012] UKSC 11, [2012] All ER (D) 153 (Mar)
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.
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 made by the police into the claimant.
Investigations were made into