In his case, the presumption listed in section 16(a) of the Law was refuted in order to make the discussion of section 16(b) of the Law redundant, as the Honorable Justice Procaccia said as follows: It is sufficient to refute the presumption of good faith in its positive aspect, as stated in section 16(a) of the Law, or that the third alternative to the presumption of bad faith in the negative aspect exists under section 16(b)(3) of the Law, in order to lay a sufficient basis for the conclusion that this is a publication that does not enjoy the protection of good faith. Civil Appeal 89/04 Dr. Yuli Nudelman v. Natan Sharansky (para. 27).
The Honorable Justice Procaccia further noted that the normative range of reasonableness, within which the publication was made, may indicate the good faith of the publisher of the defamation. Deviation from the scope of reasonableness creates a presumption of bad faith, which, if not refuted, will thwart the establishment of a defense for the advertiser for his offensive remarks.
Considerations regarding the determination of compensation
The plaintiff petitions for compensation without proof of damage under sections 7a(b) and 7-(a)(c), in the sense of doubling the amount of compensation for each publication, due to the intention to harm the plaintiff.
The defendants claimed that this was a single set of statements, which did not establish a right to separate compensation, and denied the intention to harm the plaintiff.
Number of Publications
Section 7a(d) clarifies that a person will not receive compensation without proof of damage, due to the same defamation more than once.
In Civil Appeal 2855/20 Person v. Anonymous (6 October 2022), the discussion revolved around the interpretation of the term "the same defamation". The court proposed three auxiliary tests for examining cases in which a number of publications with similar characteristics were made: the content of the publications and the degree of similarity between them; the time that elapsed from publication to publication; the identity of the recipients and the platform of publication.