Serious Harm Test
Under s.1 Defamation Act 2013, a statement is not defamatory unless its publication has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the claimant's reputation. For bodies trading for profit, serious harm means serious financial loss.
Independent editorial summary — not the official statute text. Read the official version on legislation.gov.uk.
Section 1 of the Defamation Act 2013 introduced a statutory threshold that did not previously exist at common law: a statement is not defamatory unless its publication has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the reputation of the claimant. A claimant must clear this hurdle before any claim in defamation can proceed at all.
The threshold is set even higher for corporate claimants. For the purposes of section 1, harm to the reputation of a body that trades for profit is not 'serious harm' unless it has caused or is likely to cause the body serious financial loss — a company cannot rely on reputational harm alone; it must show, or be likely to show, that the harm has hit its finances.
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Official sources
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