Word: libellant
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Britain's stern laws of libel and contempt, which keep much of Britain's news out of print, made news on their own account last week...
...their coverage of Dr. John Bodkin Adams' trial on a charge of murder, five London newspapers-the Daily Mail, News Chronicle, Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard and Daily Mirror-had libel writs from Dr. Adams' lawyers...
...separate action resulting from the Adams case. Britain's biggest newsstand distributor, W. H. Smith & Son. announced that henceforth it will 1) screen all foreign newspapers and magazines for material that seems to violate the libel and contempt laws, and 2) handle no publications that do not have a British representative who can be held responsible in the event of court judgments. In addition, Smith's asked foreign publishers to indemnify them against fines and other expenses levied on them as a result of material in publications distributed by them...
...need, said the New Statesman and Nation, for "a thorough overhaul of the law governing contempt of court, with its arbitrary powers . . . and its medieval refusal of all right of appeal." But, as the Manchester Guardian pointed out, "there is no clear way out of the thicket"'of libel and contempt strictures. Britain's libel laws are an uncodified mass of legal decisions from which lawyers have never culled a satisfactory definition of defamation. They make Britain's press the most suit-harried in the world...
Stewart, preparing for a teaching career, still hopes to get into open court, if only with a civil libel suit. "Reforms never come without agitation," he said last week. "And the role of the agitator is never popular or pleasant. But I am confident that once the laymen get the truth, they will save Methodist preachers from humiliation and the Methodist Church from disgrace...