A retired lawyer has learnt the hard way to stick to polite chit-chat at parties after he was ordered to pay R70,000 to one of his swanky Port Alfred Marina neighbours who he said was “whoring around to get business”.
Peter Basset, who retired to the Sunshine Coast after wrapping up his legal career in KwaZulu-Natal, shocked guests at a 2016 party when he made several defamatory statements about Isobel Meyer – a Pam Golding franchisee and the Port Alfred Marina chair.
Peter Charter, a family friend of Meyer’s, was at the party – and testified during the defamation case.
Among several other derogatory and crude statements, Basset claimed Meyer was “a slut who sleeps around with anyone to promote her business”.
According to Charter, the statements were made when the guests, about 10 people, were sitting around a fire and the conversation turned to the marina.
Court papers suggest Basset “was angry about marina affairs” and made numerous statements about Meyer, calling her a b*tch, slut and whore.
The papers read: “The defendant continued in this manner for a few minutes, holding the floor and ranting about the marina and the plaintiff sleeping around with other men.”
Also according to the papers, Charter met Meyer several months after the party and told her what had been said.
The slurs did not sit well with Meyer, a wife and mother of three, who in court testified to only having sexual relations with her husband – a statement that was never contested.
On hearing of the slurs, Meyer sprang into action and a lawyer’s letter demanding an apology and R1.5m was sent.
Meyer said the slurs caused her great stress and she thought people would not want to do business with “an immoral person”.
She said she found it difficult to concentrate on running her business as a result, became an emotional wreck and withdrew socially.
She said the incident was on her mind when she woke and when she went to sleep and she took sleeping tablets and medication for depression.
Court documents show that a written apology dated October 17 2017 was received from Basset but was not accepted “because he made excuses for his conduct”.
Prior to Meyer’s attorney summonsing Basset, some toing and froing took place between the two, with changes to the apology suggested and an offer to accept lower damages eventually coming to naught.
In coming to a decision on how much Basset should pay Meyer, judge Judith Roberson said: “I consider the defendant’s statement to contain serious defamatory material.
“The plaintiff’s standards of sexual propriety were besmirched to a considerable extent.
“She was accused of having extramarital sexual relations with more than one man.
“The accusation that she did so to further her business was an accusation of unethical professional conduct in a regulated profession which is, as the plaintiff said, very competitive.
“It was clear from the plaintiff’s evidence that she was very hurt, both personally and professionally, by the statements and that they have had a lingering effect.”
While Roberson believed “the language used by the defendant was ugly and degrading, and displayed a vicious dislike of the plaintiff”, she also took into account that Basset had apologised when ordering that he pay Meyer R70,000.
In her judgment, she said: “On the other hand, the defendant did apologise not long after he received the letter of demand and after this apology was not accepted, tendered another apology which was a full admission of the elements of defamation.
“It would have been better if the plaintiff had shown this letter to the persons who had attended the gathering.
“If those persons were in doubt about the truth of the defendant’s statements, the apology would have remedied that doubt.”
The judgment was handed down in the Eastern Cape High Court in Makhanda in late February.