Judges told they must consider Facebook defamation in ‘the real world’

Nicola Stocker, 51, has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling that she was guilty of defamation when she told her ex-husband’s new lover that he had tried to strangle her.

Mr Justice Mitting, who heard the original trial, said that based on the definitions of the word strangle in the Oxford English Dictionary she must have meant Ronald Stocker was trying to kill her.

Mr Justice Mitting ruled in 2016 that his intention when putting his hand round her neck was “to silence, not to kill”. 

He noted that the dictionary defines strangling either as killing someone by compressing their throat or to “constrict painfully” the throat and ruled Ms Stocker must have been using the first definition as she had used the word “tried” and her husband had succeeded in the second definition.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/24/judges-told-must-consider-facebook-defamation-real-world/
[category global, domestic violence]

  

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