03/02/2020 Stocker v Stocker [2019] UKSC 17 (3 April 2019) thoroughly disreputable man. Mrs Stocker refuted this. She said that it was not reasonable to infer that she had suggested that her husband was dangerous on account of his having been arrested a number of times. It is to be observed, however, that in the defence filed on her behalf, Mrs Stocker averred that the statement that her husband was dangerous and disreputable was justified. It seems likely that this was by way of alternative plea. In any event, for reasons that will later appear, this is immaterial because of the rule concerning the substantial truth of the statements made by the alleged defamer. 7. At the start of the defamation proceedings, Mitting J, the trial judge, suggested that the parties should refer to the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of the verb, “strangle”. This provided two possible meanings: (a) to kill by external compression of the throat; and (b) to constrict the neck or throat painfully. The judge was asked by counsel for the appellant, Mr Price QC, to consider how the words, “tried to strangle” had been used in different contexts. Mr Price also sought to introduce legal definitions of the word “strangle”. These do not appear to have been taken into account by Mitting J and he did not refer to them in his judgment. 8. Mr Stocker gave evidence that, on the occasion when the altercation which led to his wife accusing him of trying to strangle her took place, he had been standing on a stool or a chair while she was adjusting the length of a pair of his trousers. She had pricked him with a pin. He had sworn at her. She swore back at him and he placed his hand over her mouth to prevent her raised voice from waking their sleeping son. The judge rejected this account, saying, at para 43: “I do not accept [Mr Stocker’s] account that he merely put one hand over [Mrs Stocker’s] mouth while he was standing on the stool or chair. His hand would have been at his thigh level. He could not have exerted more than momentary pressure on her mouth, from which she could instantly have escaped. Nor could he have left the reddening marks on her neck or throat which I am satisfied were seen by the police. I do not, however, believe that he threatened to kill her or did anything with his hands with that intention. I do not believe that he was capable even in temper of attempted murder. The most likely explanation about what happened is that he did in temper attempt to silence her forcibly by placing one hand on her mouth and the other on her upper neck under her chin to hold her head still. His intention was to silence, not to kill.” 9. This finding implicitly rejects Mrs Stocker’s account of the incident also. She had said that her husband had dismounted from the chair, had pushed her against a small sofa, put his hands around her neck and squeezed, causing her to believe that he would kill her. The judge accepted that some two hours after the incident, red marks on Mrs Stocker’s neck had been seen by police officers but he came up with a theory as to how those had come about which neither party had proposed. 10. It is of course open to a trial judge, after considering all the evidence, to reach his or her own conclusions or to draw inferences which neither party has advanced or espoused. But there must be a sound basis for doing so. In this case, the judge accepted the police evidence that there were red marks on Mrs Stocker’s neck. Mr Stocker had agreed during a police interview that it was possible that he had put his hand around his wife’s neck and, implicitly, that this had caused the red marks that were found there. He had also said that he had dismounted from the chair or stool on which he had been standing; had followed Mrs Stocker over to a chair and that it was possible that he had put his https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2019/17.html 3/16