Hatred, Ridicule or Contempt
A Book of Libel Cases
Joseph Dean
272 pages including index
published in 1953

When I was reading Unnatural Death the following passage intrigued me:

"You are too easily surprised," said Mr Towkington. "Many words have no legal meaning. Others have a legal meaning very unlike their ordinary meaning. For example, the word 'daffy-down-dilly'. It is a criminal libel to call a lawyer a daffy-down-dilly. Ha! Yes, I advise you never to do such a thing."

As she's a lawyer, I thought Sandra may know more about this "daffy-down-dilly" thing. Though she herself didn't, she pointed me to this book as a (partial) answer. As the subtitle says, this is a collection of libel cases, compiled to show the different aspects of English libel law and because they're interesting in their own right. Sadly, the "daffy-down-dilly" case wasn't among them, but the book does show the absurdities that can arise out of the libel laws.

One of which was the case of Artemus Jones. In July 1908 the Sunday Chronicle published an article about the Dieppe Motor Week, which fatured a madeup character with the name of Artemus Jones. Unfortunately, unknown to the author of the article, there was a real life Artemus Jones who promptly sued the publication for libel. This despite the fact that the real Artemus was nothing like the person portrayed in the article and despite the fact that the author indeed didn't even know Artemus existed. One would think Artemus' case stood little cance, but unfortunately the judge was annoyed with the article's levity and this influenced his decision. Artemus won, the defendants appealed, but lost in appeal as well. Which led to a series of worse and worse libel trials in which various newspapers were sued for defaming persons they neither knew existed nor intended to refer to...

What I like about this book is the way in which it's written. Clear and with an understated sense of humour. A good selection of interesting cases too. Recommended.