ALLEGED LIBEL

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21189, 12 August 1940, Page 8

ALLEGED LIBEL

COURT CASE REPORT THE STANDARD SUED JUDGE’S SUMMING UP (By Telegraph.—Press Association) AUCKLAND, Monday “The case for defendants is that plaintiff suffered not a penny damage by reason of anything which appeared in the newspaper The Standard,” said Mr A. H. Johnstone, K.C., in opening the defence to-day in the action before Mr Justice Fair and a Supreme Court jury in which Francis Simpson, printer, claims £IOOO damages from the New Zealand Worker Printing and Publishing Company and John Glover, the publisher, for false and malicious publication. Mr Johnstone said the Standard published an apology for the mistake made in the first report, and suggested nominal damages. Addressing the court for plaintiff, Mr J. F. Jackson said that in none of the reports of the Magistrate’s Court proceedings in other newspapers was any reference made to Communists, and the magistrate in his decision said it was not a question of any man’s private opinion, but of the effect of the pamphlet concerned on war effort. Attack On Communists Only the Standard went out of its way to attack Communists, said counsel, because some of the men prosecuted happened to be Communists. The Standard had published a false statement that plaintiff was a Communist and was associated with the Communist paper the People’s Voice. In summing up, the judge indicated that to call a man a Communist when he was not a Communist might, in the present-day meaning of the word, constitute libel. His Honour suggested that the damages suffered in this case might not be considered heavy. The jury retired at one o'clock.