Limitation Period

Steedman and others v British Broadcasting Corporation (CA NLJ 30 November)

The time limit for defamation actions has been progressively reduced: from six years to three years by the Administration of Justice Act 1985, s57, and again from three years to one year by the Defamation Act 1996, s5. The rationale was that claims to protect one’s reputation ought to be pursued with vigour because memories fade and journalists and their sources scatter and become untraceable. The Law Commission’s recent report did not appear to have attached any weight to the consideration that a major, if not the major, objective of the defamation action is the vindication of the claimant’s reputation, which in most cases could only be attained by swift remedial action. However, there was no doubt that the courts did view these actions in this way, and the experience of the judges in this highly specialised field of practice needs to be taken carefully into account before there is any question of re-introducing a more relaxed limitation regime for defamation cases. The courts’ approach to delay has undergone a sea-change. Delay itself, whether or not it was established to have been prejudicial to the defendant, was rightly treated as prejudicial to the administration of justice. Accordingly, in an action brought more than a year after an allegedly defamatory programme was televised by the defendant, the action was struck out as statute barred under s4A of the Limitation Act 1980 (as substituted by s5(2) of the Defamation Act 1996) and the claimant’s application under s32A(1) of the 1980 Act (as substituted by s5(4) of the 1996 Act) for an order that s4A should not apply to the action, was dismissed.