"I think it is right to say that this court will be disinclined to reverse the finding of a trial judge as to the amount of damages merely because they think that if they had tried the case in the first instance they would have given a lesser sum." In the Times Newspapers case [5] this court followed Rookes v Barnard [7] to the extent that we adopted the approach to the question of damages. We said at page 12: "[The court] should consider first what sum to award as compensation and . . . should take into account the whole of any aggravating conduct of the defendant, and . . . only then . . . turn to consider whether [the] proposed award is sufficient to punish and deter the defendant." This approach is straightforward where there is only one defendant, but where there are several defendants and the actions are not consolidated difficulties arise both in the earlier cases and in the later cases. For instance, in the first case in a series the court does not know on what basis, if at all, the later cases will be defended or whether any such defence will be successful, and does not know what will be the conduct of the defendants in the later cases. In the words of Gatley, at that stage the court can deal with the matter only on very broad lines, doing its best to ensure that the plaintiff is fully compensated for the damage caused by the publication of the particular libel which is the subject of that action, bearing in mind that he should not be compensated twice for the same loss. That was precisely the position of the trial court and of this court in the Times Newspapers case [5]: that action was not, defended on the merits, but that did not mean that subsequent defendants would ncessarily adopt the same course nor did it mean that the conduct of subsequent defendants would be similar to the conduct of the Times Newspaper. If for the sake of example there were five defendants before the court at the same time in consolidated actions and all were held to be responsible in