Libel in Fiction

The most famous libel in fiction case is that of Princess Irina Youssoupoff v. MGM [1934] 50 TLR 581 (CA) in which the Princess successfully claimed that she had been defamed in the 1932 movie ‘Rasputin and the Empress’.
The film showed a Princess in it called Natasha having been seduced. The Princess in the film was, however, clearly ‘identifiable’ as Princess Irina Youssoupoff who had in fact been raped and not seduced. One of the defences MGM used was that the Princess had indeed been shown to have been raped and therefore could not be blamed which in turn meant that she had not been defamed. (While this does demonstrate the attitudes towards women which prevailed at the time, that’s something I’ll leave for another day.) Slesser LJ held that the test should not be whether the plaintiff had been exposed to ridicule, hatred and contempt but if — expanding the Parmiter v Coupland definition – the defamation had caused the plaintiff to be shunned and avoided. He thought that the film was defamatory whether it suggested rape or seduction and said:

“I, for myself, cannot see that from the plaintiff’s point of view it matters in the least whether this libel suggests that she has been seduced or ravished. The question whether she is or is not the more or the less moral seems to me immaterial in considering this question whether she has been defamed, and for this reason, that, as has been frequently pointed out in libel, not only is the matter defamatory if it brings the plaintiff into hatred, ridicule, or contempt by reason of some moral discredit on her part, but also if it tends to make the plaintiff be shunned and avoided and that without any moral discredit on her part. It is for that reason that persons who have been alleged to have been insane, or to be suffering from certain disease, and other cases where no direct moral responsibility could be placed upon them, have been held to be entitled to bring an action to protect their reputation and their honour. One may, I think, take judicial notice of the fact that a lady of whom it has been said that she has been ravished, albeit against her will, has suffered in social reputation and in opportunities of receiving respectable consideration from the world. …. When this woman is defamed in her sexual purity I do not think that the precise manner in which she has been despoiled of her innocence and virginity is a matter which a jury can properly be asked to consider.”

The WSJ Law Blog [1] speaking of another case on the issue which has just been filed says:“To make out a libel-in-fiction claim — a somewhat counterintuitive theory in which a plaintiff claims that something that is fictional is not factually accurate — Batra [the plaintiff] must demonstrate that the identities of the real and fictional characters are “so complete that the defamatory material” becomes a “plausible aspect” of the plaintiff’s real life.”
Links:
[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/03/20/libel-in-fiction-claim-rarely-successful-survives-summary-judgment/?mod=WSJBlog
[2] http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/364/