Hoffman v Challis

Judgment

1. HER HONOUR: These are proceedings for defamation which are before the Court today for the first listing in accordance with practice note SC CL 4. The parties have this morning argued the defendant's objections to the imputations pleaded by the plaintiff. This judgment determines those objections. In accordance with the usual practice in this list, those determinations, insofar as objection was taken as to the capacity of the matter complained of to convey an imputation, are to be regarded as the determination of a separate question in the proceedings.
2. The statement of claim complains of four defamatory publications. As to the first matter complained of, the defendant takes two objections to the imputations specified by the plaintiff. The first is an objection as to form in respect of imputation 11(d) as follows: "The plaintiff's practice of making false claims about himself and the business of DHR has become so notorious that the word 'Hoffmanitis' has come into common usage to describe a culture of hypocritical dishonesty at DHR for which the plaintiff is responsible."
3. One can well understand the pleader's desire to include in the statement of claim an imputation endeavouring to distil the defamatory sting arising from the treatment of the made-up term, "Hoffmanitis". The matter complained of prominently features a photograph (which I assume is of the plaintiff) with the following words in larger font than the balance of the publication: Hoffmanitis noun a syndrome where one embellishes one's resumé while simultaneously pointing out others doing the same, saying 'there is no room for embellishment' even if 'the consequences are unbelievably significant', and 'as tempting as those things are to do it will always come back to haunt you.'
4. There are in other places in the matters complained of frequent references to or uses of the term "Hoffmanitis".
5. I have concluded, however, that the imputation brought forward in this version of the statement of claim is bad in form. The imputation is directed to the degree of notoriety of the plaintiff's practice of making false claims. That is not in itself an attribution capable of sustaining a defamatory imputation. In my view the rhetorical focus on the extent of notoriety of the practice (being such as to give rise to the word coined by the author) is embarrassing in that it is apt to distract the attention of the tribunal of fact from the true attribution made by the matter complained of. It may be that the pleader could, in a further attempt, distil the defamatory sting of that and related passages of the matter complained of, but the present imputation in my view is embarrassing for the reasons I have explained and is liable to be struck out on that account.