''Morgan v Odhams Press Ltd'' clarified the law in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

regarding identification of the

plaintiff A plaintiff ( Π in legal shorthand) is the party who initiates a lawsuit (also known as an ''action'') before a court. By doing so, the plaintiff seeks a legal remedy. If this search is successful, the court will issue judgment in favor of the p ...

in an action for

defamation Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...

Claim

A newspaper article in '' The Sun'' (then owned by

Odhams Press Odhams Press was a British publishing company, operating from 1920 to 1968. Originally a magazine publisher, Odhams later expanded into book publishing and then children's comics. The company was acquired by Fleetway Publications in 1961 and th ...

) reported on the kidnapping of a young woman by a dog- doping gang. The woman had been staying at the home of Mr. Morgan, a journalist, at the time of her kidnap. Morgan claimed that even though the article did not mention him in any way, it implied to those who knew that the woman was staying with him that he was a member of the gang.{{cite web, url=http://lawiki.org/lawwiki/Morgan_v_Odhams_Press_(1971), title= Lawiki.org : Morgan v Odhams Press (1971), author=Kevin Boone, date=February 23, 2006, accessdate=May 23, 2009

Judgement

Lord Morris of Borth-y-gest John William Morris, Baron Morris of Borth-y-Gest, (11 September 1896 – 9 June 1979) was a judge in England and Wales. He was a Law Lord from 1960 to 1975. Early life Morris was born in Liverpool, where his father was a bank manager. He ...

ruled that even though the plaintiff was never referred to by name, nor was he even directly implicated upon strict reading of the defamatory article, he was still sufficiently identified. This was because a substantial group of people who knew the plaintiff understood that it referred to him. Lord Morris held that this was sufficient, even though no-one called to give evidence in fact believed the allegations to be true.

References

English tort case law English defamation case law House of Lords cases 1971 in United Kingdom case law Odhams Press