Libel and Defamation Law to be Replaced

Cabinet has approved the repeal of the Libel and Defamation Law and will be replacing it with simply a Defamation Law, the papers for which will be introduced at the next House of Representatives meeting. We spoke with Attorney-General, Magali Marin-Young, who explained that the new Bill will replace an outdated piece of legislation with a view to cover all possible scenarios where defamation can occur.

Magali Marin-Young

Magali Marin-Young, Attorney-General

“The objectives are really to modernize the law on defamation and there are some archaic procedural rules when one approaches the court with matters involving libel or slander. They have to be pleaded separately, for example, so this new law simplifies it and we simply call it a claim in defamation. It recognizes that defamation may take place in digital formats and on social media platforms and it also widens the debt net for not only established news media but there are a lot of persons on social media who purport to be part of the established media, so we are widening the net to also include those persons. People have created all sorts of pages purporting to be media pages and publishing various commentaries, purported news articles and so yes, it’s being widened to include those platforms and those pages. It simplifies the manner in which one approaches the court. It provides the court with creative remedies and it basically codifies some of the common law defenses – the defense of truth, justification, fair comment. There are some judgments that the court has tried its best to deal with defamation in other formats. I think there was a case involving a Facebook post.”