Workbook on Digital Private Papers > Legal issues > Defamation
Defamation
When does libellous material cease to be libellous?
The law of defamation only protects the living. Therefore once a person has died they cannot be libelled and their descendants cannot pursue a case to protect their posthumous reputation.
Limitation periods
Since the 1996 Defamation Act, an action of libel or slander may not be brought 'after the expiration of one year from the date on which the cause of action was incurred' (s. 5.1).
There is also some protection for the ignorant plaintiff: s. 5.4 of the 1996 Defamation Act allows the one-year limitation period to be overridden where this appears to be equitable. Circumstances that would be considered in such an instance include the length and cause of the plaintiff's delay. Specifically relevant to digital archives may be a scenario in which a plaintiff brings an action outside the one-year limitation period because they were not aware of all the facts within that period. This might happen in relation to the contents of a personal archive because the plaintiff was not aware that someone's personal archive contained material defamatory to their reputation, or indeed that the archive had been deposited at a repository. It is probable that the plaintiff would not discover the existence of the defamatory material for some time after the archive is issued to the public for research. In such a case, the date on which the facts become known to the plaintiff and the speed of the plaintiff's action thereafter would be important factors in deciding whether an action can be brought.
