A COSTLY LIBEL

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 340, 29 October 1908, Page 7

A COSTLY LIBEL

SOAP COMBINE. "DAILY MAIL" PAYS MORE DAMACES. VERDICT £23,000. (di TKLEGmrn —rnEss association—carinianT.i (Ree. October 23, 11.17 p.m.) London. Octobcr 28. A jury of the King's Bench Division awarded Edward Cook and Company, soapmakers, £23,000 damages against the proprietors of tho "Daily Mail" and "Evening Nows" for libels extending over two years in connection with tho-proposed soap combine. HISTORY OF THE LIBELS. AGGREGATE COST NEARLY .£IOO,OOO. The "Daily Mail," "Mirror," and "Evening News" conducted an attack which smashed the proposed soap combine, but it has been at a huge cost to those newspapers. In the action brought against them last year by Lever Bros, (of 'Sunlight" soap fame), the defendants agreed, after two days' fighting ill Court, to pay plaintiffs ,£50,000 (a sensational figure, which exceeded by ,£38,000 the highest award ever blade in a libel case previously), : ahd the costs' ran into many thousands more. Addiijg the £23,000 awarded in -the case' now cabled, the crusade must have cost the Associated Newspapers Company not far short of ,£IOO,OOO. The fact is that the defendant papers, to effect their purpose, made statements which they could not substantiate. In the Lever case, the libel in the main consisted of statements that " the plaintiffs fraudulently sold soap by short weight (15oz. as IGoz.), taking measures to conceal the fact even from their own employees; that they for their own aggrandisement dismissed large numbers of their employees without regard for their welfare, and were intending to dismiss many more; that they made a corner in raw materials used for the manufacture of soap, and were ringing the share'-mar-ket, attempting to bribe the press and freezing out competitors; and also that the announcement by them that the so-called Soap Trust had come to an end was falsely made with intent to deceive." Before the defendants . surrendered in tho Lever case, their counsel, Sir Rufus Isaacs, the eminent cross-examiner,. failed to seriously shake Mr. Lever. When Mr. Isaacs suggested that even before the defendants' statements appeared the trade had become dissatisfied with the coupon system of Lever Bros., Mr. Lever explained that it was at tho direct request of customers that the • firm resorted to gifts of fancy articles, and that the whole system of coupons was ultimately dropped only because the narrow margin of profit would not allow of its continuance. When Mr. Isaacs sought to prove that, quite independently of the defendants' attack, grocers wero up in arms at the firm's methods in meeting a rise in the prico of, raw materials by a reduction in weight, Mr. Lever promptly replied that his firm were in receipt of numerous communications com- 1 mending their action. When, finally, Mr. Isaacs endeavoured to show that the firm's method of intimating to purchasers that. they had reduced the weight of the IGoz. tablet' was not quite as clear and as' straightforward as it might have been, Mr: Lever effectually retorted that ho was the only soap manufacturer who had ever advised his customers of a change in weight. In entering judgment according to the settlement, Mr. (Justice A. T. Lawrence said:—"lt would bo very ungracious in me to express any criticism of the articles which form the, sub-ject-matter of this libel after the course which had been taken, and therefore I do not propose to do so. I will only say this, that if I nad been called upon to deal with these articles, and there had been nothing'more to justify them than lias appeared in cross-examination so far as it has gone, I should have felt it my duty to expross myself in no hesitating or measured language as to the charactcr of these articles."

Edward Cook and Co.'; soap makers, tallow inciters, etc., registered sinlß9B,i lia's ...a total caxiital of "