Innocent Dissemination - The Defence

The Defence

At common law, a defence of innocent dissemination is available to a person who, neither knowingly nor negligently, had merely a subordinate role in the dissemination of the matter containing the defamatory statement.

In Vizetelly v. Mudie's Select Library, a circulating library provided to subscribers a book on Stanley's search for Emir Pasha in Africa, which turned out to be defamatory. The issue was whether the library can claim protection under innocent dissemination. Lord Justice Romer described the defence as follows:

That innocent of any knowledge of the libel contained in the work disseminated by, that there was nothing in the work or the circumstances under which it came to which ought to have led to suppose that it contained a libel, and that, when the work was disseminated by, it was not by any negligence on part that did not know that it contained the libel, then, although the dissemination of the work by was primâ facie publication of it, may nevertheless, on proof of the before-mentioned facts, be held not to have published it.

Romer L.J., at 180, also noted that the defence places a heavy burden upon the defendant to show that they were not negligent. His Lordship held that the defendant library was liable for having negligently overlooked the publisher's request for return of the offending book.

Therefore, the defence involves three limbs:

1. the defendant did not know that the publication complained of contained a libel;
2. the defendant had no grounds to suppose that it was likely to contain defamatory matter; and
3. the absence of knowledge was not due to any negligence on the defendant's part.

However, it appears that a printer cannot evoke this defence. This has been criticized as "illogical" and has been explained as an exception that made sense in the days of primitive technology only - when printers used to read what they print, which is no longer the case.