High Court considers hyperlinked pages as context in defamation case

Mr Justice Tugendhat ruled in a defamation case brought by Islam Expo Ltd against journalist Stephen Pollard and The Spectator, which published the article in question. The hearing decided only that the article referred to Islam Expo. A later hearing will deal with the question of whether the remarks were defamatory of the company.

Some of the words in the article were hyperlinks to other web pages. Lawyers for Pollard and the Spectator argued that when the content of these pages was taken into account, it became clear that the article did not refer to Islam Expo.

Mr Justice Tugendhat ruled that the hyperlinked articles should be considered as context for the decision on whether Islam Expo was the subject of the piece.

"It is a principle of law ... that in order to determine the meaning of words complained of it is necessary to take into account the context in which the words were used and the mode of publication," he said in his ruling. "Thus a claimant cannot select an isolated passage in an article and complain of that alone if other parts of the article throw a different light on that passage."

"That principle has been established by a number of authorities all of which relate to printed publications. In a printed publication the text may be broken up and parts given more emphasis than others. Some parts may be on one page and a continuation of the same text may appear on a subsequent page," he said.

Mr Justice Tugendhat said that the material on other pages should be taken into account but said: "I do this without thereby intending to imply any ruling, one way or the other, as to whether that approach is right in law".

"[Pollard and The Spectator submit] that text on web pages, to which a reader of the words complained of will be directed if the reader clicks on the hyperlink, is to be treated as parts of the words complained of for the purposes of determining what the words complained of mean," he said. "[They claim] that the words complained of are incapable of being understood to refer to [Islam Expo], and especially so when read in the proper context of the underlying hyperlinked documentation."

The judge disagreed. He said that even in the context of the content linked to by the article and the fact that there may be some ambiguity about the precise Islam Expo being referred to, it did refer in fact to the company involved in the litigation.

"I had little hesitation in reaching the conclusion that the words complained of were capable of referring to [Islam Expo]," he said. "The words 'IslamExpo' may well be the name both of the claimant corporation, and of the events which the claimant corporation organises from time to time. But the fact is that the words 'IslamExpo' appear in the relatively short words complained of. A tribunal of fact which decided that those words referred to the Claimant corporation could not be characterised as perverse."