Two Major Types Of Innuendo

There are two major types of innuendo.

The first is false innuendo. It is a defamatory statement made that has an implied meaning, so only individuals who have the necessary contextual knowledge can appreciate and understand that the comment is defamatory. This may require some sort of cultural, geographic information.
There is also legal innuendo.

While this is not defamatory on its face, a legal innuendo statement can be defamatory when combined with certain extrinsic or outside circumstances. This contextual information may cause a statement to be considered defamatory in a certain jurisdiction while not another.

When looking at legal precedent , strict liability rule is applied to legal innuendo . This is the standard level of liability

In a classic formulation, recently adopted and approved by Geopel J. of Supreme Court of British Columbia, a communication is defamatory if it “tends to harm the reputation of another so as to lower [him, her or it] in the estimation of the community or deter third persons from associating or dealing with them. If the defamatory communication takes a permanent or semi-permanent form – that is, if it is written, or spoken while being recorded or filmed such that it is preserved in some way – then it is libel, and actionable without proof of actual pecuniary loss. If it is some exceptions, only the economic losses that can be proven to have resulted from the false communication can be recovered.
Examples:-
Capital And Counties Bank vs Henty & Sons :-
The defendant wrote to their customers saying ‘Henty & Sons hereby give notice that they will not receive in payment cheques drawn on any of the branches of the Capital and Counties Bank.’ The contents of the circular became known and there was a run on the bank. The bank claimed they had been defamed.
Held: The plaintiff’s appeal failed. In their natural meaning the words were not capable in law of being defamatory. Lord Selborne LC said: ‘The test, according to the authorities, is, whether under the circumstances in which the writing was published, reasonable men, to whom the publication

Lord Blackburn said: ‘1. The plaintiffs are bankers, and the defendants are brewers. 2. The defendants falsely and maliciously wrote and published of the plaintiffs the letter following: ‘Messrs. Henty & Sons hereby give notice that they will not receive in payment cheques drawn on any of the branches of the Capital and Counties Bank (late the Hampshire and North Wilts). Westgate, Chichester, 2nd December, 1878.’ Meaning thereby that the plaintiffs were not to be relied upon to meet the cheques drawn on them, and that their position was such that they were not to be trusted to cash the cheques of their customers.’