-15remain on the notice board “for some days”32 because she could see no harm in it. 36. All three Judges held that there had been publication by her. Greer LJ33 so concluded on the basis that she and her husband (the other defendant), being proprietors of the establishment: “...by allowing the defamatory statement, if it be defamatory, to rest upon their wall and not to remove it, with the knowledge that they must have had that by not removing it it would be read by people to whom it would convey such meaning as it had, were taking part in the publication of it.” 37. Slesser LJ thought that only the secretary (and not her husband) had published the defamation by adopting the statement posted on the notice board: “There are cases which go to show that persons who themselves take no overt part in the publication of defamatory matter may nevertheless so adopt and promote the reading of the defamatory matter as to constitute themselves liable for the publication. ... I think having read it, and having dominion over the walls of the club as far as the posting of notices was concerned, it could properly be said that there was some evidence that she did promote and associate herself with the continuance of the publication in the circumstances after the date when she knew that the publication had been made.”34 Greene LJ pointed out that attaching the notice to the club’s walls 38. was a trespass and that both defendants as proprietors had ample powers to remove it. 35 He stressed that whether what had occurred amounted to publication was a question of fact which depended on whether the circumstances justified the inference that the defendants had assumed responsibility for the continued presence of the statement on their notice board: “It may very well be that in some circumstances a person, by refraining from removing or obliterating the defamatory matter, is not committing any publication at all. In other circumstances he may be doing so. The test it appears to me is this: having regard to all the facts of the case is the proper inference that by not removing 32 [1937] 1 KB 818 at 822. 33 Who dissented on the question of defamatory meaning, the majority holding that the words were not capable of being defamatory. 34 [1937] 1 KB 818 at 834-835. 35 At 837.