Tattersall v Tattersall [2025] EWHC 2558 (KB)
Tattersall v Tattersall: Defamation Claim Struck Out for Lack of Serious Harm
Overview
In the High Court decision Tattersall v Tattersall [2025] EWHC 2558 (KB), Mrs Justice Collins Rice struck out a libel claim on the basis that it did not meet the serious harm threshold under section 1(1) of the Defamation Act 2013. The case arose from a single Facebook post made by the defendant during a family dispute with the claimant. The defendant applied to strike out or summarily dismiss the claim without trial, arguing that the claimant “does not and cannot show” that the post caused or will likely cause serious harm to her reputation. The Court agreed that the claimant’s case on serious harm was fundamentally deficient and bound to fail, resulting in the claim being struck out at a preliminary stage. This decision illustrates the strict approach the courts now take to the serious harm requirement, especially in cases of limited publication on social media.
The claim arose out of a single Facebook post made by the defendant in early September 2021. The parties are mother and daughter in law. The claimant, Mrs Elizabeth Lynette Tattersall, is the mother of the late Mr Michael Tattersall, who died suddenly in 2019. The defendant, Mrs Yvonne Marie Tattersall, was his widow. Following his death, a family dispute arose over liabilities and assets, and by June 2021 the claimant had issued County Court proceedings concerning the home that the defendant had shared with the deceased.
The Facebook post complained of read as follows:
“Went out tonight in my village for the first time in nearly 2 years since my husband died, I have not been able to go out because people who used to be my friend have decided to support my mother in law, a women who has tried to make me homeless and continually told lies about me. Anyone who really knows me knows I am not capable of what she is accusing me off. I no longer want anything to do with anyone who is friends with her so goodbye I shall be deleting you.”
The post was deleted around the time the County Court proceedings concluded in February 2023. Two slightly different versions were later recovered, but nothing of significance turned on which version was relied upon.
Meaning as Determined at the Preliminary Issues Hearing
At the hearing on 16 September 2025, the Court determined the single natural and ordinary meaning of the words complained of for the purposes of the claim as follows:
- 1(a) The defendant had not been able to socialise in her village for nearly two years.1(b) Because formerly mutual friends had taken sides against her and in favour of the claimant in a dispute between them.Meaning 1(a) was an assertion of fact. Meaning 1(b) was an expression of opinion. Neither was of defamatory tendency at common law.
- The claimant had been trying to deprive the defendant of her home.Meaning 2 was an assertion of fact. It was of defamatory tendency.
- The claimant had been telling lies about the defendant.Meaning 3 was an assertion of fact. It was of defamatory tendency.
Legal Framework: Strike Out and the Serious Harm Threshold
Under English civil procedure, a claim may be struck out or dismissed by summary judgment if it discloses no reasonable grounds or is bound to fail, including where it is an abuse of process such as a defamation claim involving no substantial tort. In defamation law, the Defamation Act 2013 introduced a heightened threshold of seriousness. Section 1(1) of the Act provides that “a statement is not defamatory unless its publication has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the reputation of the claimant.” This statutory test makes serious harm to reputation a legal prerequisite for any libel or slander claim after 2013. The courts have emphasised that the test is an objective, fact-based inquiry. It looks at the actual impact of the publication on those to whom it was published rather than the claimant’s own feelings or the inherent tendency of the words.
As the Supreme Court confirmed in Lachaux v Independent Print Ltd [2019] UKSC 27, section 1(1) imposes a “new threshold test” to be determined by reference to the actual facts of publication and its impact, not merely the defamatory meaning of the words. In practice, this means a claimant must plead and prove that the statement had, or will probably have, a seriously damaging effect on their reputation in the real world. If a claimant cannot meet this requirement, the claim will not be allowed to proceed. Courts may deal with the serious harm issue as a preliminary matter, for example on a strike out application, to dispose of weak claims at an early stage.
Pleading Serious Harm in Tattersall
In this case, the claimant’s Particulars of Claim attempted to set out a case of serious reputational harm based on the Facebook post’s reach and content. The pleading, as amended, asserted that at least fifty seven people had reacted to the defendant’s Facebook post and invited the inference that the true number of readers was substantially higher. The claimant listed a series of factors in support of an inferential case that serious harm to her reputation had been or would be caused.
The first was the gravity of the allegations. The Facebook post accused the claimant of very serious misconduct, namely that she had tried to make the defendant homeless and continually lied about her. Such allegations, it was pleaded, went to the heart of the claimant’s personal integrity as an honest member of society.
The second factor was the local context and publication. The defendant was a well-known member of the local community and the claimant too was well known in the village of Whalley. The pleading suggested that many within Whalley were likely to have seen the words complained of, implying a broad reputational impact in the claimant’s home community. In addition to the fifty-seven Facebook friends who reacted, multiple other friends and colleagues of the claimant had contacted her to discuss the post, indicating wider publication by inference.
The third factor concerned reactions to the post. The claimant pointed to the response of the defendant’s Facebook friends who commented on the post expressing support for the defendant and condemning the alleged behaviour of the claimant. She argued that readers were encouraged by the defendant to disassociate themselves from the claimant as a result. In essence, the claimant contended that the post successfully turned mutual acquaintances against her, harming her standing among those who read it.
Finally, the claimant relied on personal fallout. The pleading described the effect on her personally, stating that the post had an enormous impact on her, causing significant distress and anxiety, and that she felt unable to return to her former village because of the reputational damage. Whalley was the village where she had lived until 2019 and where many of her friends resided.
These points formed the backbone of the claimant’s case that the publication met the serious harm threshold. In summary, she relied on the serious nature of the accusations, the extent of publication (both actual and inferred), the local prominence of the parties, the negative reactions of readers, and the consequences she experienced, to argue that her reputation had suffered serious harm.
The Court’s Analysis and Decision
Mrs Justice Collins Rice closely examined the way serious harm was pleaded and found it wanting in several respects. First, the judge noted that parts of the claimant’s pleading addressed the wrong issue. Paragraphs devoted to the claimant’s own distress and anxiety, and her reluctance to visit the village, did not address the statutory test of serious reputational harm. Evidence of a claimant’s subjective feelings or emotional impact may go to damages but is not proof of harm to reputation in the eyes of others. The serious harm test is objective and concerned with how the publication affected third-party readers’ opinions, not the claimant’s personal reaction or subjective fears. By focusing on her personal upset, the claimant had pleaded matters that did not plead out serious reputational harm for the purposes of the statutory test.
Secondly, the High Court found that the pleaded examples of reputational harm were insufficiently specific and lacking in coherence. For instance, the claimant alleged that several friends and colleagues contacted her about the post but crucially there was no pleading that any of these people thought any the worse of the claimant because of the post. Simply averring that people discussed the content with her did not equate to an allegation that those people’s opinions of her had actually declined. Likewise, the pleading that some of the defendant’s Facebook friends responded with supportive comments for the defendant, condemning the claimant’s supposed behaviour, was not tied explicitly to harm in reputation. The judge agreed that an unparticularised partisan response in a social media comment thread, especially in the context of an ongoing family feud, does not in itself address the serious harm test. The claimant had not set out any facts showing that the defamatory allegations changed readers’ perceptions of her in a negative way; she only pointed to the fact that a partisan conversation occurred. This was a critical omission. As the Court observed, merely showing that people took sides or echoed the defendant’s position is not enough. The legal test requires evidence that the claimant’s reputation in the community suffered serious damage, for example that people actually believed the allegations and shunned her or lowered their estimation of her as a result.
The claimant’s case on serious harm was, in essence, wholly inferential. She was asking the court to infer serious reputational damage from a combination of circumstances. The judge highlighted that when a case is based on inference, the pleadings must lay down a solid factual groundwork for that inference. In this regard, the claimant’s pleading fell far short. It identified only a few basic building blocks, namely the defamatory nature of the allegations, a modest extent of publication to at least fifty-seven people on Facebook, and the parties’ local profile in the village, but it failed to connect these points into any concrete narrative of serious reputational harm. Mrs Justice Collins Rice drew a stark distinction between laying a factual groundwork for inference and leaving a vaguely indicated case to be fleshed out by speculation and guesswork. The claimant’s pleadings were of the latter kind, vague and inviting speculation rather than stating a clear inferential theory of how her reputation was seriously harmed.
Several gaps and ambiguities were noted in the pleading. The gravity of the allegations, while certainly capable of being defamatory, was presented in the post as part of a larger family dispute story, effectively incidental or secondary to the defendant’s explanation of why she was removing certain people from her Facebook friends. The judge pointed out that the claimant had not articulated how the inherent seriousness of those accusations translated into actual reputational harm beyond the existing fallout of the family feud. In other words, if one strips out the defamatory sting, the post was about a family rift and the defendant’s social response to it. The claimant needed to plead what additional damage to her reputation was caused by the inclusion of the “liar” and “making me homeless” accusations as opposed to the neutral fact of a dispute, but she did not do so.
As for the extent of publication, the claimant’s own case put the primary readership at fifty-seven Facebook friends, which the Court noted is not a negligible number but a relatively modest starting point for any inference of serious harm. The claimant suggested more people likely saw the post but provided no particulars to support how many or who they were, beyond saying many within Whalley might have seen it. It was unclear whether those “many” were simply the defendant’s other Facebook friends or members of the public more generally. Crucially, there was no pleading of any republication or dissemination beyond the initial Facebook audience. The fact that both parties were well known in the village was not tied to any concrete mechanism by which gossip or news of the post spread further. The pleading left that to assumption. The judge found that being prominent locally carries no necessary implication that a Facebook post visible only to the defendant’s friends would have any particular real-world impact or gain onward traction beyond that circle. In short, the claimant never explained who beyond the initial fifty-seven or so people would have learned of the allegations or altered their view of her because of them. The Court was being asked to infer wide reputational harm on scant factual detail.
After adjusting the pleadings to strip out legally irrelevant matter and to account for the true meaning of the words (which had been determined at a preliminary issue trial), the judge concluded that the claimant’s case on serious harm was largely speculative and insubstantial. Even assuming the few factual allegations in the Particulars of Claim were true, the combination of a limited publication to a small group of acquaintances, contextual factors suggesting readers might simply see the dispute as a family squabble, and an absence of any concrete examples of people actually treating the claimant differently, did not amount to a viable case of serious harm. The pleadings, the judge said, fall a long way short of articulating any real reputational impact or explaining how and why it can be inferred on the facts pleaded. Establishing those few pleaded facts would not be capable of establishing an inference that the words complained of caused in the past or were likely to cause in the future serious harm to the claimant’s reputation. The factual basis was too thin, lacking the necessary particularity, substance and inherent logical probability needed to sustain the inference of serious harm.
Mrs Justice Collins Rice held that the claimant’s serious harm pleading failed to comply with the requirements of Practice Direction 53B, which obliges defamation claimants to plead the facts of publication and harm in detail, and did not give the defendant a fair or adequate basis to meet the case. In the Court’s view, the case on serious harm as pleaded would be bound to fail. No realistic suggestions were offered as to how the pleading could be amended to cure its defects and thus in those circumstances it ought to be struck out. The judge therefore ordered the claim struck out at the interlocutory stage.
It is worth noting that, in addition to the pleading flaws, the judge also considered the evidence that the claimant had mustered on serious harm, since a small number of witness statements were available from an earlier stage of the case. This confirmed the Court’s view that the claim had no real prospect of meeting the serious harm threshold. The available evidence of harm to reputation was minimal and alternative explanations existed for any social fall-out. Indeed, the judge concluded that the prospects of a court being persuaded to infer serious reputational harm from the facts and evidence before it are also unreal. The allegations, in context, were of only modest gravity, the publication was limited, and there was no evidence that anyone’s mind had actually been changed for the worse. Thus, even if the case had not been struck out for pleading inadequacy, it would likely have been dismissed on the merits of the serious harm issue.
Conclusion
The Tattersall v Tattersall decision is a clear reminder of the high bar set by section 1 of the Defamation Act 2013. A claimant must do more than recite that allegations are serious and people reacted to them; they must particularise facts showing a substantial adverse effect on their reputation. In this case, the claimant’s general inferences and focus on her own distress were not enough. The Court required a coherent, fact-supported story of how the Facebook post caused serious reputational damage, and in its absence the claim was culled at an early stage.
For practitioners, the case underlines the importance of pleading serious harm with precision and evidence. If the pleaded case on harm is vague or speculative, defendants can and will seek to strike it out. Serious harm is now a threshold filter in libel litigation. Only claims that can demonstrate a real and significant impact on reputation will be allowed to proceed. Tattersall exemplifies the judiciary’s willingness to enforce that threshold rigorously, ensuring that trivial or unsubstantiated defamation claims do not consume court time.
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