ENGLISHMAN LTD Vs. ANTONIO ANIVABENE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal from the judgment and decree of my learned brother Buckland, J. whereby he gave to the plaintiff Rs. 7,500 as damages in respect of an alleged libel published in the issue of the newspaper called, The Englishman on 7 August 1929. The suit was brought in respect of two publications alleged to be defamatory--one on 5 August and the other on 7th. The case as regards the former was a case both against The Englishman Limited, a company owning the newspaper and against one De Silva -- a reporter on the staff of the said newspaper who on 4 August had an interview with the plaintiff. It appears that, on 4th August, there was a paragraph in another newspaper to the effect that, as a result of certain strikes in cotton mills in Lancashire, certain Italian cotton manufacturers were taking stops to come over to Calcutta with a view to increase the export of their cotton goods from Italy into Calcutta and to dispose of those goods here; accordingly Mr. De Silva -the reporter of the Englishman--was asked by his superior officer to go to the plaintiff who at that time was the Royal Consul-General for Italy. It would seem that Mr. De Silva was given certain points by way of questions which might be asked upon the matter. He says that he copied those questions down in his note-book. On the morning of Sunday, 4 August, he went to the office of the Italian Consul-General and was taken into his waiting-room. It further appears that the plaintiff at that time was very inadequately equipped with knowledge of the English language and his method of speaking English has been described as broken English. It is the plaintiff's own case that his knowledge of the English language was at that time very defective and that he had real difficulty in con-ducting ordinary conversation in that language.

(2.) On this Sunday morning the reporter says that ha had a short interview with the plaintiff. It is common ground that certain names of places were mentioned and that the plaintiff wrote certain names correctly in De Silva's note book and there can be no doubt also that the plaintiff understood that ha was granting an interview for the purpose of publication. There is considerable difference between the parties as to what was actually said. As it is not material for the present purpose that I should endeavour to arrive at any conclusion as to the exact degree of truth between the statement of the plaintiff on the one hand and Da Silva's statement on the. other, I am content to say that the plaintiff's version is that ha told Da Silva that he knew nothing about this alleged arrival of Italian cotton manufacturers or the alleged probability of increasing their business in Calcutta.

(3.) The plaintiff says that he gave De Silva the names of some cotton manufacturers in Italy and the names of some of the principal firms in Calcutta; but that, in effect, he told De Silva that he knew nothing about the matter and that, if the mail of that day contained any information, ha would get a member of his office staff to communicate it to De Silva. De Silva, on the other hand, says that the plaintiff discussed to some small extent with him various matters which he afterwards wrote out for publication and which appeared in the paper of 5th August 1929. There is some reason for thinking that the plaintiff has exaggerated the shortness of the interview and that he is wrong in supposing that beyond the matters which I have mentioned he said nothing to the reporter. That arises from the fact that according to the plaintiff in the witness-box there was nothing in De Silva's note-book at the time when the plaintiff wrote down certain names therein. It appears to be reasonably certain that there were certain short-hand notes upon that page. However that may be, there is a long step between saying that the plaintiff has minimized the amount of information that he endeavoured to give and saying that the plaintiff, in fact, committed himself to everything that appeared in the issue of 5 August.