The verdict given in the Court of Appeal on Monday
in the libel action Newstead v. The Daily Express well illus- trates (failing a reversal of the judgement by the House of Lords) the pitfalls which the law of libel prepares for per- fectly honest and well-intentioned journalists. The facts are simple. The Express had published a photograph of two women who figured in a bigamy case, with a paragraph beneath them which began " Harold Newstead, 3o year old Camberwell man, who was jailed for nine months, liked having two wives at once." That was all perfectly true. Harold Newstead (barman, of Crofton Road, Camber- well) did display those proclivities, and was incarcerated for that period. But another Harold Newstead (hairdresser, also about 3o years old, also of Camberwell) deposed that many of his friends thought the paragraph applied to him and he claimed damages in consequence. The appeal was actually confined to the question of a re-trial, but the important point that all three Lords Justices in their judge- ments agreed that the fact that defamatory words were true of A (in this case Mr. Newstead, the barman) did not in law make it impossible for them to be defamatory of B (in this case Mr. Newstead, the hairdresser). What this amounts to is that if a paper makes about Mr. Jones a true statement which if untrue would be damaging, it must attach to the name of Mr. Jones such an elaboration of description that there could be no possibility of mistaking him for any other of the myriad Mr. Joneses whose names swell the directories of these islands. It is hard, it is unreasonable, but it appears to be the law.
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