Claming Compensation in the courts, Closing address.

Closing Address

Plaintiff Council

Good morning ladies and gentlemen of the jury. My client has had his rights violated, and it is this courts job to see that it is to be set right. Compensation must be payed. What this reviewer has done to my clients is a total breach of his rights, rights that protect his reputation in the community. These hurtful, fabrications were published in order to ruin my client.

The law of defamation has a difficult task. It draws the line between the rights of an individual, and that of the community. In this particular case it is ridiculous to believe that this restaurant reviewer had the right to make such a slanderous remark, and then publish it.

Under the Defamation Act or 1889 this is the correct and full meaning of this law. Any person who, by spoken words or audible sounds, or by words intended to be read either by sight or touch, or by signs, signals, gestures, or visible representations, publishes and defamatory imputation concerning any person is said to defame that person.

Chefs in training in Paris, France (2005).

The Judicial Duel. The Plaintiff opening his Case ...

Plaintiff's Exhibit filed in Dorothy E. Davis, et ...

Based on this definition of defamation, the following elements are to be proven.

Defamatory matter: The thing said must be capable of being defamatory.

Reference to the plaintiff: The things said must be capable of allowing others to know that if refers to the plaintiff.

Publication: They must have been communicated to at least one third party.

These are the three tests to prove that the act of defamation has been breached. Also no actual harm is necessary, the plaintiff may not be harmed at all, but the injury must be likely to occur in the minds of "just and reasonable people". In this law the "reasonable person test" also applies.

The first test is that of defamatory matter, to find...