The law does not care too much about what people call you or what they perceive that you did if they are genuine about the way they feel and the circumstances can provoke such feeling in reasonable people. It does not matter that what they said is wrong in fact and that they might have been grossly mistaken about the kind of person that you really are. I did a case where the claimant treated vitrolic name calling as libel. He lost.
Wali JSC on fair comment (words that characterize others and their actions) in the case of THE SKETCH PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD. & ANOR V. ALHAJI AZEEZ A. AJAGBEMOKEFERI
(1989) LPELR-3207(SC):
“What is it that fair comment means? It means this- and I prefer to put it in words which are not my own; I refer to the famous judgment of Lord Esher M. R. in Merivale v. Carson: ‘Every latitude, said Lord Esher, ‘must be given to opinion and to prejudice, and then an ordinary set of men with ordinary judgment must say (not whether they agree with it, but) whether any fair man would have made such a comment:Mere exaggeration, or even gross exaggeration, would not make the comment unfair. However wrong the opinion expressed may be in point of truth, or however prejudiced the writer, it may still be within the prescribed limit. The question which the jury must consider is this – would any fair man, however prejudiced he may be, however exaggerated or obstinate his views, have said that which this criticism has said?’ Again as Bray J. said in R. v. Russell: ‘When you come to a question of fair comment you ought to he extremely liberal, and in a matter of this kind – a matter relating to the administration of the licensing laws – you ought to be extremely liberal, because it is a matter on which men’s minds are moved, in which people who do know, entertain very, very strong opinions, and if they use strong language every allowance should be made in their favour. They must believe what they say, but the question whether they honestly believe it is a question for you to say. If they do believe it, and they arc within anything like reasonable bounds, they come within the meaning of fair comment.”
Published by Chuks Nwachuku
