Libel and slander – Defamatory words. Publications which baldly restated the allegations of others were likely to amount to a republication of those allegations. For the purposes of meaning, the practical effect was that the allegations were adopted by the republisher. There was no requirement that a publisher had to actively or expressly adopt the allegations. Accordingly, the Queen's Bench Division ruled that the repetition rule applied to the present libel proceedings brought by the claimant barrister against the defendant publishers of The Times and the MailOnline respectively, concerning articles published in April 2017. The court considered, as a preliminary issue, whether the words in the articles complained of were capable of bearing the pleaded meaning.