The defendant, on behalf of the two news media in question, made no attempt to defend the action on the merits. The present appeal is directed solely to the quantum of damages awarded by the learned judge in the High Court. The grounds of appeal, although expressed somewhat differently, reduce themselves to the following: (a) that the award was excessive because the plaintiff had already received a total of K20,000 from the Times newspaper and a sum of K10,000 from the Daily Mail newspaper for publication of the same libels; (b) that the learned judge failed to take into account that the originator of the libels, a Mr M. Liyoka, had not been brought to court to meet his liability to the plaintiff; (c) that the learned judge had failed to give adequate consideration to the provisions of section 15 of the Defamation Act, Cap. 70, and that the plaintiff had sued the various defendants at different times. The learned Attorney-General argued that both the compensatory and the exemplary damages were excessive. He argued that there appeared to be a tendency to follow English cases in awarding huge damages in libel actions, and submitted that the measure of damages to he awarded in any case must be assessed against the background of local conditions. I am in full agreement with this proposition. However, before this court can interfere with an award of damages it must be shown that the trial judge has applied a wrong principle or has misapprehended the facts or that his award is so high (or so low) as to be utterly unreasonable. It is no ground for varying an award made by the trial judge that the judges in the appellate court would have awarded a different sum. It is worth quoting again the oft-quoted dictum of Greer, L.J., in Flint v Lovell [6] at page 360: