Was an autobiography harmful to a child?

The Supreme Court have given their decision in James Rhodes v OPO 2015

Click to access uksc-2014-0251-judgment.pdf

This was a case in which James Rhodes, a concert pianist, author, and film-maker, wrote an autobiographical account of his life,  and where the mother of their child sought an injunction to prevent its publication. The Court of Appeal granted that injunction, based on an 1897 case called Wilkinson v  Downton. That case established a cause of action which was “intentionally causing physical or psychological harm”

Mr Rhodes took that case to the Supreme Court, and triumphed.

The Supreme Court posed the central question in this way:-

What, then, is the proper scope of the tort in the modern law? In particular, can it ever be used to prevent a person from publishing true information about himself?

When you read snippets from the book contained in the judgment, those snippets pull no punches. It describes the dreadful sexual abuse that the author sustained as a child, the harrowing impact that it had on him, the consequences throughout his life and how for the author, music provided an escape from that. The descriptions are brutal and shocking – but of course, so is what happened to this man as a child. The words hurt, but nothing like how the experience must have hurt.

One can also see that the mother of a young boy (who has Aspergers’ Syndrome, amongst other difficulties) would be worried about the boy coming across these accounts.  They are graphic accounts – they are so by intent – the author is wanting to convey just how monstrous what happened to him was, to reach out to other victims or potential victims, and possibly to reduce the chances of what happened to him happening to others. They are not easy to read – even for me – and I work within a field where I see accounts of abuse against children almost every week and would be expected to be somewhat more de-sensitised to it than the average adult. What James Rhodes has written is powerful and hard to read.  I commend him for it.

[This isn’t a terribly neutral summary, I am glad that he won this case – but nor do I think that the mother was a bad person for bringing the claim – I see entirely why she would not want her son to read this material whilst he is a child, and that in the modern era it is not as simple as just not having a copy in his home to read – the internet will have passages from it, indeed the judgment does, and other children who the son knows may come across it and make use of it]

As a matter of law then, what does the Supreme Court have to say about this tort?

Let’s look at the history first – as ever with old caselaw, the facts are quirky, and I’m sure that nobody involved ever imagined they’d be making legal history and newspaper headlines 120 years later.

Mr Wilkinson had been out at the races (I think that I can say without fear of defamation 120 years later that some degree of liquid refreshment may have played a part in the day’s events) and his friend Mr Downton decided that it would be an amusing practical joke to tell Mrs Wilkinson that Mr W had had an accident at the races, broken his leg and needed help.  Mrs W took it very badly and had weeks of nervous shock.

Wilkinson v Downton

31. Mr Downton secured a place for himself in legal history by a misconceived practical joke. He thought that it would be a cause of harmless amusement among the clientele of the Albion public house in Limehouse to tell the landlord’s wife, Mrs Wilkinson, a false tale that her husband had fractured his legs in an accident while on his way back from a race meeting and that he had sent a message to ask for her help to get him home. It cost her 1 shilling and 10 ½ pence to send her son and another helper on this fools’ errand, but a matter of far greater concern was the effect on her health. She suffered severe shock to her nervous system, which manifested itself in vomiting and weeks of physical suffering. Mrs Wilkinson had not shown any previous sign of predisposition to nervous shock. She and her husband sued Mr Downton, and the matter came to trial before Wright J and a jury.

32. Recovery of the transport costs incurred in response to Mr Wilkinson’s supposed request for help presented no legal difficulty. Such costs were recoverable as damages for deceit. The jury assessed damages for the illness caused to Mrs Wilkinson by her nervous shock (together with her husband’s claim for the resulting loss of her services) at £100, but the legal basis for making such an award was problematic.

33. Wright J rejected the argument that damages for deceit could include an award for Mrs Wilkinson’s suffering, because the essence of liability for deceit was that a maker of a false representation, intended to be acted upon, was liable to make good any loss naturally resulting from the representee acting on it, but the illness suffered by Mrs Wilkinson was not a consequence of her acting on what she was told. It was simply a consequence of the shock brought about by the news reported to her.

34. Wright J held, at pp 58-59, that a cause of action could be stated in law where a defendant has

“wilfully done an act calculated to cause physical harm to the plaintiff – that is to say, to infringe her legal right to personal safety, and has in fact thereby caused physical harm to her.”

He continued

“That proposition without more appears to me to state a good cause of action, there being no justification alleged for the act. This wilful injuria is in law malicious, although no malicious purpose to cause the harm which was caused nor any motive of spite is imputed to the defendant.”

35. This compact statement of law contained a number of key features. First, he identified the plaintiff’s protected interest as her “legal right to personal safety”. Secondly, he identified the defendant’s act as wilful. Thirdly, he described the act as “calculated” to cause physical harm to the plaintiff. Fourthly, he noted the absence of any alleged justification. Fifthly, he characterised the “wilful injuria” as “in law malicious” despite the absence of any purpose (ie desire) to cause the harm which was caused. Having stated the law in that way, Wright J then considered whether it covered Mrs Wilkinson’s claim. He held that it did. He said:

“One question is whether the defendant’s act was so plainly calculated to produce some effect of the kind which was produced that an intention to produce it ought to be imputed to the defendant, regard being had to the fact that the effect was produced on a person proved to be in an ordinary state of health and mind. I think that it was. It is difficult to imagine that such a statement, made suddenly and with apparent seriousness, could fail to produce grave effects under the circumstances upon any but an exceptionally indifferent person, and therefore an intention to produce such an effect must be imputed …”

The discussion of the Supreme Court into this tort and partic ularly on the key ingredient ‘maliciously’ is wide-ranging –  covering level-crossings, horses ram-raiding into pubs, pretending to unmask someone as a German spy, and imputations of inchastity.  I was saddened that the promising case name of Mayor of Bradford v Pickles 1895 did not hinge on a gherkhin-related dispute, but rather on water supply…

Of course, you will note that in Wilkinson v Downton, the story that caused the harm was false, made up, whereas the story being told by Mr Rhodes is true. We shall see if that makes a noticeable difference.

72. The order made by the Court of Appeal was novel in two respects. The material which the appellant was banned from publishing was not deceptive or intimidatory but autobiographical; and the ban was principally directed, not to the substance of the autobiographical material, but to the vivid form of language used to communicate it. The appeal therefore raises important questions about freedom of speech and about the nature and limits of liability under Wilkinson v Downton.

73. In Wilkinson v Downton Wright J recognised that wilful infringement of the right to personal safety was a tort. It has three elements: a conduct element, a mental element and a consequence element. The issues in this case relate to the first and second elements. It is common ground that the consequence required for liability is physical harm or recognised psychiatric illness. In Wainwright v Home Office Lord Hoffmann discussed and left open (with expressions of caution) the question whether intentional causation of severe distress might be actionable, but no one in this case has suggested that it is.

When writing a book, the author is not obliged to consider that any reader of the book might be caused damage by reading it – that would make it almost impossible to write anything. The Court of Appeal had held that it was applicable in this case to consider that in writing the book, the child was a relevant person to take account of – i.e that he was a specific person who could be said to be affected by it.

74. The conduct element requires words or conduct directed towards the claimant for which there is no justification or reasonable excuse, and the burden of proof is on the claimant. We are concerned in this case with the curtailment of freedom of speech, which gives rise to its own particular considerations. We agree with the approach of the Court of Appeal in regarding the tort as confined to those towards whom the relevant words or conduct were directed, but they may be a group. A person who shouts “fire” in a cinema, when there is no fire, is addressing himself to the audience. In the present case the Court of Appeal treated the publication of the book as conduct directed towards the claimant and considered that the question of justification had therefore to be judged vis-à-vis him. In this respect we consider that they erred.

75. The book is for a wide audience and the question of justification has to be considered accordingly, not in relation to the claimant in isolation. In point of fact, the father’s case is that although the book is dedicated to the claimant, he would not expect him to see it until he is much older. Arden LJ said that the father could not be heard to say that he did not intend the book to reach the child, since it was dedicated to him and some parts of it are addressed to him. We have only found one passage addressed to him, which is in the acknowledgments, but more fundamentally we do not understand why the appellant may not be heard to say that the book is not intended for his eyes at this stage of his life. Arden LJ also held that there could be no justification for the publication if it was likely to cause psychiatric harm to him. That approach excluded consideration of the wider question of justification based on the legitimate interest of the defendant in telling his story to the world at large in the way in which he wishes to tell it, and the corresponding interest of the public in hearing his story.

76. When those factors are taken into account, as they must be, the only proper conclusion is that there is every justification for the publication. A person who has suffered in the way that the appellant has suffered, and has struggled to cope with the consequences of his suffering in the way that he has struggled, has the right to tell the world about it. And there is a corresponding public interest in others being able to listen to his life story in all its searing detail. Of course vulnerable children need to be protected as far as reasonably practicable from exposure to material which would harm them, but the right way of doing so is not to expand Wilkinson v Downton to ban the publication of a work of general interest. But in pointing out the general interest attaching to this publication, we do not mean to suggest that there needs to be some identifiable general interest in the subject matter of a publication for it to be justified within the meaning of Wilkinson v Downton.

As the Supreme Court point out here – Mr Rhodes case triumphs on the wider public interest of telling his story, but that does not mean that the story HAS to have that wider public interest to defeat a Wilkinson v Downton claim.

Where a story is true, they say, the law gives the freedom of someone to tell the truth a great deal of protection.

77. Freedom to report the truth is a basic right to which the law gives a very high level of protection. (See, for example,Napier v Pressdram Ltd [2009] EWCA Civ 443, [2010] 1 WLR 934, para 42.) It is difficult to envisage any circumstances in which speech which is not deceptive, threatening or possibly abusive, could give rise to liability in tort for wilful infringement of another’s right to personal safety. The right to report the truth is justification in itself. That is not to say that the right of disclosure is absolute, for a person may owe a duty to treat information as private or confidential. But there is no general law prohibiting the publication of facts which will cause distress to another, even if that is the person’s intention. The question whether (and, if so, in what circumstances) liability under Wilkinson v Downton might arise from words which are not deceptive or threatening, but are abusive, has not so far arisen and does not arise for consideration in this case.

It MIGHT be that a set of circumstances exist in which words in a publication are true, and not threatening, but are abusive and would cause harm to the recipient, but it is quite difficult to think of what those circumstances might be. It may be some time before we see another Wilkinson v Downton claim.

Finally, the Supreme Court looked at the mental element of the tort (the intent)

83. First, where a recognised psychiatric illness is the product of severe mental or emotional distress, a) is it necessary that the defendant should have intended to cause illness or b) is it sufficient that he intended to cause severe distress which in fact results in recognisable illness? Option b) is close to the version stated by Salmond & Heuston which attracted Lord Woolf in Wainwright v Home Office.

They concluded that option b was correct, and declined to develop the law to include ‘recklessness’ within the mental element of the offence.

89. In the present case there is no basis for supposing that the appellant has an actual intention to cause psychiatric harm or severe mental or emotional distress to the claimant.

Also hooray for Lord Neuberger’s remarks on free speech.

96. It is true that the book contained material which some people might find offensive, in terms of what was described and how it was expressed, but “free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence” – see Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions (1999) 7 BHRC 375, para 20, per Sedley LJ. As he memorably added, “[f]reedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having”.

97. Quite apart from this, it would, I think, be an inappropriate restriction on freedom of expression, an unacceptable form of judicial censorship, if a court could restrain publication of a book written by a defendant, whose contents could otherwise be freely promulgated, only refer in general and unobjectionable terms to the claimant, and are neither intended nor expected by the defendant to harm the claimant, simply because the claimant might suffer psychological harm if he got to read it (or extracts from it).