[56] The publication of the said advertisement in the Malay Mail shall be privileged, unless it is proved to be made with malice, pursuant to s. 12 of the Act read together with para. 3 of Part I of the Schedule to the Act. A person who requested for the publication of an advertisement would have to pay for that service. What ill-will can be imputed when the 1st respondent is not a party to the bankruptcy proceedings and clearly would not even know whether the debt or judgment sum has been settled by the appellant. One cannot even impute any knowledge to the 1st respondent whatsoever even if the application for substituted service was improper. In Searles v. Scarlett [1892] 2 QB 56 an action for libel was dismissed on the ground that the publication of a mere copy of what is contained in a register of judgments is privileged. The facts of the case are as follows. The plaintiff was a hotel-keeper and the defendant was the secretary of the Ramsgate Trade Protection Association. An extract from the register of county court judgments was published in The Weekly Journal of the Associated Trade Protection Societies of Great Britain and Ireland issued by the Ramsgate and District Trade Protection Association, stating that judgments had been obtained in the county court against the persons named, among whom was the plaintiff. The journal had a considerable circulation among tradesmen in the neighbourhood of Ramsgate. A note was appended to the effect that the statement was taken from the register of county court judgments, but that no distinction was made in the register between actions for debt or damages or properly disputed cases, neither was it known which of the judgments remained unpaid, but it was probable that a large proportion of them had been settled or paid.

[57] The plaintiff brought an action for libel alleging by way of innuendo that the statement meant that a judgment had been obtained against him in the county court, which remained unsatisfied, and that he was insolvent and a person to whom credit ought not to be given. The judgment was in fact satisfied at the time of the publication of the alleged libel. It appeared to have been through some mistake that the judgment was ever entered on the register as the plaintiff had paid the amount earlier. The trial judge decided that the words complained of were not capable of the defamatory meaning alleged. An application for a new trial of the action was made but was dismissed by the Court of Appeal on the ground that the publication of a mere copy of what is contained in a register of judgments, kept in pursuance of an Act of Parliament, and which by law the public are entitled to inspect, is privileged and as there was no evidence of actual malice, the action was not maintainable. In his judgment, Lord Esher, MR said (at pp. 59-61):

If such a list of judgments had not been made under any legislative authority, but had been kept by a private person for his own purposes, then it seems to me that there might be no privilege. But the ground upon which the privilege has been put is this. It has been said that these judgments are the judgments of a court of law instituted by the legislature, and it is directed by the law that a register shall be kept of them, which is to be open to public inspection. The legislature has enacted that people may go and look at the register, obviously not for the purpose of mere curiosity, but that they may act on the information thereby obtained; so that any tradesman who is considering whether he shall give credit to a person may inspect the register and see whether there are judgments against him upon it. The law provides that the register shall be a public document which anybody may consult for this purpose. That being so, the publisher of such a list as this is only doing for the public what they may do for themselves, and is only giving that information to the public and to tradesmen which the legislature has thought it right they should have