Post-Lachaux, how have the courts been confronting defamation & the serious harm test? Athelstane Aamodt offers an update
Following the Supreme Court’s judgment in Lachaux v Independent Print Media regarding s 1(1) of the Defamation Act 2013 in June 2019, serious harm case law has continued to evolve as more judges expound upon it and apply it to different cases.
The recent judgment of the Supreme Court in Lachaux v Independent Print Media [2019] UKSC 27, [2019] All ER (D) 42 (Jun) has settled—at least for now—how s 1(1) of the Defamation Act 2013 (DA 2013) should be interpreted. Section 1(1) says that: ‘A statement is not defamatory unless its publication has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the reputation of the claimant.’ Section 1(1) does not say what a defamatory statement is; rather, it adds a further test to the already existing tests at common law.
As is well known, Warby J at first instance held that s 1(1) made substantial changes to the law of defamation. It had previously been the case (and before the enaction
