Libel Dispute Case Study 

A libel dispute led to a mediation between members of a gardening organisation. The committee was managed by a chairperson, who organised events and other members of the committee and the treasurer. A monthly newsletter was produced by the committee with an article from the chairperson. Due to ill health the treasurer wanted to retire from the committee and concentrate on her health.

A thank you to all her hard work over the years went out in the newsletter. Alongside the thank you a sentence appeared which was quite vague referring to ‘the accounts had to be checked through and corrected…money was missing.

When the treasurer contacted the chairperson about this, they advised that the new treasurer had noticed some discrepancies and he did not want to get the blame for anything, to observe transparency he communicated this in the newsletter. The treasurer took issue, as discrepancies could have meant, simple mistakes to fraudulent activities, equally as this was such a close knit community, people could easily start to make allegations out of idle gossip.

The chairperson refused to retract the statement and issue an apology, he advised that once a thorough investigation took place he would then consider an apology on his findings, by this time months had passed and allegations had started to accumulate.