Legal Dictionary of Pakistan
Quick lookup for English, Urdu, and Latin legal terms used in Pakistani jurisprudence.
Defamatory
adj. (Of a statement or communication) tending to harm a person's reputation, usu. by subjecting the person to public contempt, disgrace, or ridicule, or by adversely affecting the person's business. "No exhaustive definition of 'defamatory' emerges from the cases for, as Lord Reid once said, it is not for the judges to 'frame definitions or to lay down hard and fast rules. It is their function to enunciate principles and much that they say is intended to be illustrative or explanatory and not to be definitive' [Cassell & Co. Ltd. u. Broome (1972) AC 1027, 1085]. One can nevertheless achieve a working description by combining two statements, namely: a defamatory statement is one which injures the reputation of another by exposing him to hatred, contempt, or ridicule, or which tends to lower him in the esteem of right-thinking members of society." RW.M. Dias & B.S. Markesinis, Tort Law 423-24 (2d ed. 1989). defamatory libel See LIBEL.
defamatory statement
A statement that tends to injure the reputation of a person referred to in it. 0 The statement is likely to lower that person in the estimation of reasonable people and in particular to cause that person to be regarded with feelings of hatred, contempt, ridicule, fear, or dislike.