Whether a Company is liable for a libel?

Whether a Company is liable for a libel?

The question raised by this Appeal is whether a Limited Company is responsible for a libel published by one of its officers.

In support of this proposition reliance was placed on the well-known judgment of the late Lord Bramwell in Abrath v. North Eastern Railway Company (11 A.C. 247 page 250)

There is no doubt that Lord Bramwell held strongly to his opinion that a corporation was incapable of malice or motive, and that an action for malicious prosecution could not be maintained against a company.

Lord Cranworth in Addie v. Western Bank of Scotland (L.R. 1 H.L. Sc. 145) had expressed a similar opinion as to the liability of corporations for frauds.

But these opinions have not prevailed, and their Lordships are not prepared to give effect to them. If it is once granted that corporations are for civil purposes to be regarded as persons, i.e. as principals acting by agents and servants, it is difficult to see why the ordinary doctrines of agency, and of master and servant, are not be applied to corporations as well as to ordinary individuals. These doctrines have been so applied in a great variety of cases, in questions arising out of contract, and in questions arising out torts and frauds; and to apply them to one class of libels and to deny their application to another class of libels on the ground that malice cannot be imputed to a body corporate appears to their Lordships to be contrary to sound legal principles.

(Their Lordships concur with the view of the Acting Chief Justice in this case that if Fitzapatrick published the libel complained of in the course of his employment, the Company are liable for it on ordinary principles of agency.)

**