SELINA PATANI & ASHIT PATANI V. DHIRANJI V. PATANI

JUDGMENT OF THE COURT

1. The law of defamation, or, more accurately, the law of libel and slander, is concerned with the protection of reputation: Defamation protects a person's reputation; that is the estimation in which he is held by others; it does not protect a person's opinion of himself nor his character. The law recognizes in every man a right to have the estimation in which he stands in the opinion of others unaffected by false statements that injure his reputation.  (See Patrick O'Callaghan in the Common Law Series: The Law of Tort at paragraph 25.1).

2. The appellants filed suit for defamation against the respondent before the Magistrates Court by a plaint dated 21^st October 2009. The particulars of the defamatory claim were that on or about 5^th October 2009, the respondent wrote letters through his advocates (Eboso and Wandago Advocates) to the appellants in which he caused to be published the following words the subject of defamatory claim:

“Between July 2006 and March 2009 w…