Page 68 - Law and the Media

Defamation
consider. This led to marked inconsistencies between awards, and outrageously high sums for
trivial defamatory statements.

In 1976 the actor Telly Savalas was awarded the sum of £34 000 for unkind things said in an
article in the Daily Mail (Savalas v. Daily Mail (1976)). The foreman of the jury wrote a
letter in his own defence to The Times, stating that at the time of the trial he and his fellow
jurors had ‘. . . not the remotest idea what compensation is paid for anything . . . Apparently
that is why we were asked. If that is so, the court had the outcome it deserved from the
appointed procedure’ (The Times, 22 June 1976).

A surge of high jury awards in the 1980s, including £1.5 million in 1989 to Lord Aldington
and £500 000 in 1987 to the writer and politician Jeffrey Archer for an article in the Daily
Star suggesting that he slept with a prostitute (which famously led to his imprisonment in
2001 for perjury and contempt of court) resulted in the Court of Appeal being given power
by reason of Section 8 of the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 to substitute the jury’s
award with a sum it considered to be proper.

As a result of this power, the Court of Appeal reduced Esther Rantzen’s libel damages award
from £250 000 to £110 000 (Rantzen v Mirror Group Newspapers (1994)). In reaching its
conclusion, the Court of Appeal looked at Article 10 of the European Convention on Human
Rights right to freedom of expression and recognized that, although it was not part of United
Kingdom law, where ‘freedom of speech is at stake the Convention should be regarded as
part of the English common law’. The Court of Appeal found that the almost limitless
discretion of the jury in awarding damages failed to provide a satisfactory measurement of
‘what is necessary in a democratic society’.

In John v Mirror Group Newspapers (1997) the Court of Appeal finally ruled that juries
could be given specific figures for suggested damages by the trial judge and counsel as
guidance, and that comparisons could be made with personal injury damages. In line with
this ruling, the Court of Appeal reduced the award made by the jury to the singer Elton John
from £75 000 to £25 000 for general damages and from £275 000 to £50 000 for exemplary
damages in respect of allegations published in the Daily Mirror about his private life.

The combined effect of Rantzen and John has been to develop a ‘tariff’ of approved awards
and to reduce the level of damages awarded to successful claimants, particularly against
newspapers.

1.5.2 Types of damages

Damages for defamation can fall under three possible headings:

1. Compensatory damages
2. Aggravated damages
3. Exemplary damages.
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