Defamation happens when a false statement damages someone’s reputation, although there are occasions where repeated or organised conduct may qualify as harassment. In the current digital landscape where statements can be mass published and spread with ease by virtue of social media, individuals and business should understand their legal position and the relationship between these two areas.
Defamation
A defamatory statement is a false statement that results in serious harm to a person’s reputation under the Defamation Act 2013. The defamatory statement must either worsen how right-thinking members of society see the person or causes them to be avoided and singled out.
Harassment
The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 was originally put in place to deal with stalking and persistent acts of unwanted attention. The range of actions and behaviour that may fall under harassment is very broad, and does not require physical proximity or direct contact. The conduct must occur on two or more occasions and is something the perpetrator knows or ought to know amounts to harassment. Therefore, much of what constitutes defamatory behaviour may fall under the category of harassment if it is repeated and targeted.
Crossover
The clearest area of overlap arises where someone repeatedly publishes multiple false and damaging statements or posts about the same person. One singular defamatory post may give rise to an actionable claim in defamation, but in situations where the same person returns to repeatedly publish false statements and allegations, a pattern of harassment may arise and simultaneously fall under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.
For example, if someone made more than two social media posts within the same month about the same individual where false statements are made against them, it is clear they would reasonably know, or ought to know, that such conduct constitutes harassment. In this situation it is likely the person’s behaviour would satisfy the legal thresholds of both defamation and harassment.
The case of Majrowski v Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Trust [2006] confirmed that harassment under the Act can arise in a wide range of contexts. It has been applied to subsequent cases surrounding online campaigns of defamation and reputational attacks, where the effects of the repeated publications on the individual accumulated and caused significant distress even if each individual statement fulfilled the threshold for defamation.
Significance of the Overlap
Unlike defamation, a harassment claim does not require proof of serious harm. It may therefore be easier to establish where damaging statements do not cause enough harm to meet the threshold under the Defamation Act 2013.
A harassment claim may allow compensation for psychiatric injury and distress, which is not generally recoverable in defamation proceedings. The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 also allows the court to grant an injunction preventing a person from repeating an entire pattern of behaviour, rather than merely restricting individual publications. This gives claimants access to a wider range of remedies.