Odger's English Common Law

520 DEFAMATION.
they must be understood to refer to him, and to refer to him
in a defamatory sense. The defendant may have meant one
thing and said another ;
hit another ;
he may have aimed at one man and
1 if so, the law will seize on what he said, and
disregard what he meant. The test always is, What meaning
did the words in fact convey to people who construed them
reasonably ? In construing wills, contracts, defamatory
words, Acts of Parliament and indeed all legal documents,
the first and foremost rule is that a man must be taken
to mean what he says. It may be that no defamatory
meaning was intended, yet if one was in fact conveyed, the
defendant is liable.
In the first place, then, the words must be defamatory,
i.e., they must injure the reputation of the plaintiff; they
must make people think worse of him. Only the person who
is thus exposed to public hatred, contempt or ridicule can
bring the action. 2
If words defamatory of A. cause loss or
damage to B., B. has as a rule no action; A. alone can
sue.
If a defamatory imputation be in fact conveyed, it does
not matter how it was expressed. It may be hinted or
implied, suggested by a question or a mere adjective, hidden
under a nickname or couched in some ironical phrase. If the
words in their natural and obvious meaning are harmless,
still a further question may arise : Were there any facts
known both to writer and reader which would lead the
latter to understand the words in a secondary and a defama-
tory sense ? This is a question for the jury, provided there
be any evidence to go to them of such facts and provided
also it is reasonably conceivable that such facts, if proved,
would have induced the reader so to understand the words.
This principle was laid down in the leading case of Capital and Counties
Bank v. Henty & Sons, 3 in which the facts were as follows :—The defen-
dants occasionally received in payment from their customers cheques on
various branches of a bank, which the bank cashed for the convenience of
1 This point was much discussed in Jones v. E. Stilton &• Co., \ 19091 2 K. B. 444 ;
J
[1910] A. C. 20.
a Le Farm v. Maloolmson (1848), 1 H. L. Cas. 637
8 (1880), 5 C. P. 1). 514 ; (1882), 7 App. Cas. 741.