Defamation ; ;Qualified privilege newspaper report of press conference press conference constituting public meeting ;Appeal from the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland [1998] NI 358 McCartan Turkington Breen (a firm) v Times Newspapers Ltd: HL (Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Steyn, Lord Hoffmann, Lord Cooke of Thorndon and Lord Millett): 2 November 2000 ;In defamation proceedings the claimants complained of a newspaper article published by the defendants which contained a report of a press conference arranged by an informal committee to publicise their campaign for the vindication of a British soldier convicted of murder in Northern Ireland while on duty there.

The organisers issued a general invitation to the press, a number of whom attended.

Others also attended, not by invitation, but without any restriction on their admission or check on their identity or credentials.

The article made critical reference to the claimants, who had formerly represented the soldier, and included a passage from a press release which was available and referred to but not read aloud at the meeting.

In claiming qualified privilege the defendants asserted that the article was a report of a public meeting within s.7 of and para 9 of the Sched to the Defamation Act (Northern Ireland) 1955.

The judge and the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland rejected their claim.

The defendants appealed.

;Lord Lester of Herne Hill QC, John Thompson QC, of the Northern Ireland Bar, and Tom Weisselberg (instructed by Theodore Goddard) for the defendants; ;C.

Michael Lavery QC, Mervyn Morrow QC and Alva Brangam, all of the Northern Ireland Bar, (instructed by Elliott Duffy Garrett, Belfast) for the claimants.

;Held, allowing the appeal, that public was to be given its ordinary meaning so that a meeting was public where its organisers opened it to the public or, by issuing an invitation to the press, manifested an intention that its proceedings should be communicated to a wider public; that there was nothing in the nature of a press conference to exclude it from that ordinary meaning and that the press conference in issue was, accordingly, a public meeting within the 1955 Act; further that since the contents of the press release had been communicated to attendees they were as much part of the proceedings as if they had been read aloud and could properly form part of a report of the meeting.