Public notice not damaging
Supreme Court makes ruling in newspaper announcement case
Barbara Gayle, Justice Coordinator
THE SUPREME Court has ruled that a notice published in a newspaper informing the public that a person is no longer employed to a company is not defamatory.
Deandra Chung, a former employee of Future Services International Ltd, had taken the company and its managing director, Yaneek Page, to court over several publications in March.
It was stated in the publications that she was no longer employed to the company, and she sought damages for defamation. She had resigned from the company in February.
When the matter came for hearing, attorneys-at-law Abe Dabdoub and Kevin Page representing the defendants applied for the case to be struck out on the grounds that the words were not capable of being defamatory.
The claimant, who was employed to the defendant company as senior client relations officer from 2008 to February 2012, was seeking damages in excess of $35 million.
Dismissed claim
Justice Donald McIntosh upheld the submissions and dismissed the claim. The judge awarded legal and incidental costs to the defendants.
Leave to appeal was granted to Chung who is being represented by attorney-at-law Nigel Jones. The judge said of significance was the fact that the defendants made no denial of the publication of the words, and there was no complaint by the claimant that the publication bore any falsehood. He said the claimant ascribed certain meanings to the published words. The defendants insisted that the publication was truthful, and in their natural ordinary meaning were not capable of bearing the meaning attributed to them by the claimant in her statement.
In dismissing the claim, Justice McIntosh ruled that the words complained of were not capable of bearing the meaning or meanings which the claimant attributed to them.