QB-2022-002867 - [2025] EWHC 2558 (KB)

This judgment addresses the Defendant’s application dated 11^th September 2025 to strike out, dismiss or stay the Claimant’s defamation claim. The claim arises out of a single Facebook post made by the Defendant in early September 2021.

The context was a family dispute. Mr Michael Tattersall was a businessman. He died a sudden and untimely death in 2019. He did not leave a will, and a dispute quickly arose within his immediate family about his liabilities and assets. Mrs Lynette Tattersall, the Claimant in the present case, is his mother. Mrs Yvonne Tattersall, the Defendant, is his widow. Their previously amicable relationship broke down in the immediate aftermath of Mr Tattersall’s death. The financial dispute between them led to the Claimant issuing County Court proceedings against the Defendant in June 2021. At the centre of the dispute was the question of the parties’ respective financial interests in, and liabilities relating to, the home the Defendant had shared with the late Mr Tattersall and which she continued to occupy. The County Court proceedings concluded in February 2023.

The post complained of was deleted at or about the same time. Two slightly different versions of it have been recovered. The parties agree that nothing of significance turns on which version is considered for the purposes of the claim. The version advanced by the Claimant reads 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.

Following a trial of preliminary issues on 16^th September 2025, and for the reasons given on that occasion, the single natural and ordinary meaning of this post has been determined for the purposes of this 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’.

2

The Claimant had been trying to deprive the Defendant of her home.

Meaning 2 was an assertion of fact. It was of defamatory tendency.

3

The Claimant had been telling lies about the Defendant.

Meaning 3 was an assertion of fact. It was of defamatory tendency.

By the present application, the Defendant asks the Court to terminate the claim without trial on the ground that it is bound to fail, and/or should never have been brought in the first place. That is said to be because the Claimant does not and cannot show the post complained of has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to her reputation, alternatively because no real or substantial tort has been committed and the claim is an abuse of the court’s process.