ADV. LOUIS NEL So far I’ve dealt with the following requirements in order to prove defamation: (1) reference to the plaintiff; (2) publication; (3) intention & wrongfulness. The next requirement is that the statement/publication must be defamatory i.e. it [...]

ADV. LOUIS NEL Having established intention, what is the next requirement? The following has to be established in order to determine whether or not we are dealing with defamation, but, as you will see from this chapter, the plaintiff [...]

ADV. LOUIS NEL    This is a challenging requirement and much debated. It would seem that the courts will sometimes go beyond intention and find that negligence or at least recklessness is adequate, IF it is done in such [...]

ADV. LOUIS NEL Before I deal with the Terms & conditions (‘T&C’) e.g. Facebook, etc, I think we need to get to grips with defamation and to do so we need to ‘unpack’ (1) the definition I used in the first article, 2) potential damages (claims) and then (3) the defences. At a meeting of industry professionals I recently attended the issue of defamation was discussed and what was scary was the misconceptions bandied about: not only about what constitutes defamation but what the defences [...]

ADV. LOUIS NEL   As we are all no doubt quite aware, social media has to a large extent become the medium of choice not only to publicize and disseminate information but also to glean information. Due to the [...]