Forum Archive Index - June 2000

["Oliver Shapleski" <oliver.shapleski@vuw.ac.nz>]

Nick, I partially agree - I took it as given that DFM cannot succeed due to
lack of damage.  I'm interested in the scope of the defences for the purpose
of considering comments in the future which do cause damage.

However as far as I'm aware you don't need actual damage for the words to be
defamatory, and to my mind a suggestion that a research unit picked
"randomly" COULD, without more, be defamatory.  Randomness and Research
aren't exactly terms that fit nicely together, especially if you're a
researcher.  Chris of course qualified this by admitting it was an
exaggeration, so anyone would be out of luck claiming this caused damage in
the reasonable person's eyes.

The second bit I would argue very strongly was not defamatory.  In my mind
there is nothing damaging about being called "ridiculously aggressive", so I
agree with you fully on this one.  I suppose it could be defamatory if the
object of the remark was a publicly declared conservative fund manager, but
I don't think DFM assert such a reputation.

Oliver


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.sharechat.co.nz/          New Zealand's home for market investors
To remove yourself from this list, please use the form at
http://www.sharechat.co.nz/forum.shtml.