Winston Halliday v Eileen Baronville

• Jurisdiction: Caribbean States
• Judge: Hewlett J,Cecil E. Hewlett,Puisne
• Judgment Date: 14 October 1977
• Neutral Citation: VG 1977 HC 6
• Docket Number: SUIT NO. 25 OF 1977
• Date: 14 October 1977
• Court: Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

SUIT NO. 25 OF 1977

Between:

Winston Halliday

Plaintiff

and

Eileen Baronville

Defendant

J.S. Archibald, Esq. for Plaintiff

McW. Todman, Esq for Defendant

Hewlett J

1 The parties in this case are Police Officers. The Plaintiff is a Sargeant and is the Station Officer in Road Town. The Defendant is a Corporal attached to the Criminal Investigation Department.

2 The Plaintiff is seeking aggravated damages and an injunction against the Defendant for an alleged slander and libel made on him by the defendant on the 16th February, 1977.

3 The facts are that on the 16th February, 1977 the Defendant reported for duty at the Road Town Police Station some forty minutes late and the Plaintifff, receiving no reply to his query as to the reason for the Defendant's lateness, there and then informed the Defendant that he would be preferring a disciplinary charge against her for being late. Thereupon the Defendant went immediately to the Deputy Chief of Police and reported that the Plaintiff has indecently assaulted her sometime ago. The report made to the Deputy Chief of Police is told by him in these words:

“Defendant reported that sometime in 1976 she was indecently assaulted the Plaintiff in Virgin Gorda on a dance floor; date and month she cannot remember; and again on 1st January, 1977 while she was at the race track at Sea Cows Bay”

4 The Deputy Chief of Police then summoned Inspector Blaize and the Plaintiff to him and required the Defendant to repeat her report, which she did and it is told by the Plaintiff as follows:

“I am making a report against Sargeant Halliday for indecently assaulting me in 1976, month and date I can't remember, but the incident took place on a dance floor in Virgin Gorda and on New Year's Day at the race track at Sea Cows Bay while I was on duty.”

5 The Plaintiff denied the allegations forthwith, but the Deputy Chief of Police nonetheless ordered Inspector Blaize to made inquiries into the report and himself noted the report in the Station Diary under a caption “Indecent Assault”. The matter was then referred to the Chief of Police who ordered a full investigation to be made. Inspector Blaize then obtained written statements from both the Plaintiff and the Defendant, the former denying the allegations and the latter setting out the details and particulars of the assaults. It is this written statement of the Defendant which the Plaintiff alleges constitutes the libel upon him.

6 The investigation was duly carried out and such statements and information as were collected were forwarded to the Chief of Police and this matter was laid closed on the ground of insufficient evidence. The Plaintiff then instituted this action.

7 The words of the report of which the Plaintiff complains quite clearly impute to the Plaintiff the commission of a crime punishable corporally and they are therefore defamatory. They were admittedly published and have been pleaded as being false. Such words would quite obviously, in my opinion, “lower the Plaintiff in the estimation of right thinking members of society generally” and would injure him in his personal character, reputation and office, and that the witness for the Defendant, Basil Blake, thought otherwise serves only to confirm the view that not all witnesses speak the unbiased truth. The Plaintiff's entitlement to this reputation of honour, however, will depend, among other things, upon whether or not the words are true in substance and in fact, because if they are true he certainly should not be able to complain. The principle is stated in Gatley on Libel and Slander (6 “ED”) at para 351 as follows:

“…The truth of the imputation is an answer to the action not because it negatives malice, but because the plaintiff has no right to a character free from that imputation, and if he has no right to it, he cannot in justice recover damages for the loss of it …”

8 That the words are true, therefore, is a complete defence to the action, and this is what the Defendant has both pleaded and alleged. But that plea of justification has to be proved and the authority referred to above explained at para 354 that if the words impute a specific offence, e.g. stealing a watch, it is not enough to prove that the Plaintiff stole a clock or that if he stole a watch from A, to prove that he stole it from B. This point is clearly and succinctly stated in 24 Hals at para 85:

“… If...