Court case[1929] 2 KB 331

Mr Cassidy, also known as Corrigan, was a racehorse owner who lived apart from his wife but visited her from time to time. He was photographed at a race meeting with a lady, and told the newspaper's photographer that he was engaged to her. The Daily Mirror published the photograph with a caption announcing the engagement of "Mr M. Corrigan, the race horse owner" and the lady. Mrs Cassidy, his lawful wife, sued for libel. Acquaintances of hers who knew that Mr Cassidy had visited and stayed with her as her husband said that they understood the caption to mean that she was not his wife and had been living with him in immoral cohabitation.

The Court of Appeal (Scrutton and Russell L.JJ., Greer L.J. dissenting) held the newspaper liable. The caption, read by people who knew the extrinsic facts (that she passed as Cassidy's wife and he visited her), was capable of the defamatory meaning alleged, and the jury had found that it bore it. It was no defence that the newspaper did not know of her existence and had relied on Cassidy's own statement: the publisher of words acts at his peril, and the test is how the words are reasonably understood by those to whom they are published, not what the publisher intended. Greer L.J. thought the facts did not permit the inference.