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PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE - HARASSMENT – COURSE OF CONDUCT AMOUNTING TO HARASSMENT – WHETHER SERIES OF PUBLICATIONS IN NEWSPAPER CONSTITUTING HARASSMENT – FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION – FREEDOM OF THE PRESS – TEST TO DECIDE WHETHER PROPOSED SERIES OF PUBLICATIONS LIKELY TO CAUSE DISTRESS TO AN INDIVIDUAL WOULD CONSTITUTE HARASSMENT – PROTECTION FROM HARASSMENT ACT 1997, SS 1, 3 – EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS, ART 10.
In July 2000 the first defendant published in The Sun newspaper an article about two police sergeants who had been demoted to constable following a complaint by the claimant, a clerk at the police station, in relation to a remark made in private which she considered to be racist. The name and address of the claimant were published in the article, as was the fact that she was black. The article caused a number of readers to write to the newspaper complaining about the way the officers had been treated. Extracts of some of the letters were published in the newspaper. A follow-up article was also published.
The claimant commenced proceedings under s 3(1) of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 in the county court against the first defendant and the second defendant, the journalist who had written the articles, claiming that they had been guilty of a course of conduct amounting to harassment because the series of publications in The Sun were intended to provoke hostility on the part of its readers against her on the ground of her race, and that as a result of the publications, she had received hate mail. The defendants applied to have the claim struck out pursuant to CPR 3.4.2 or alternatively for summary judgment under CPR 24. They argued that as a matter of statutory interpretation the meaning of ‘harassment’ in the 1997 Act could not extend to a series of publications in a newspaper.
The judge refused their applications, and the defendants appealed. On the appeal, they conceded that publications in a newspaper were, in law, capable of amounting to harassment, but only in rare circumstances. They argued that the defence in s 1(3)(c) of the 1997 Act that the conduct complained of was reasonable was not adequate to accommodate the right to freedom of speech, and in particular press freedom, guaranteed by art 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Held – The appeal would be dismissed.
In general, press criticism, even if robust, did not constitute unreasonable conduct and did not fall within the natural meaning of harassment. The test of whether a proposed series of publications which was likely to cause distress to an individual would constitute harassment for the purposes of the 1997 Act required the publisher to consider whether it would constitute an abuse of the freedom of the press which the pressing social needs of a democratic society required should be curbed.
In the instant case, when the three publications were considered together, the claimant had pleaded an arguable case that the defendants had harassed her by publishing racist criticism of her which was foreseeably likely to stimulate a racist reaction on the part of their readers and to cause her distress.
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