In Riley v Sivier [2022] EWHC 2891 (KB) TV presenter Rachel Riley succeeded in her libel claim against blogger Michael Sivier in a judgment handed down on 16 November 2022 by Mrs Justice Steyn. Dismissing the Defendant’s public interest defence, Mrs Justice Steyn awarded Rachel Riley £50,000 in damages and granted an injunction requiring Michael Sivier to remove the article and refrain from repeating it or words to similar effect again. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Category: Libel (Page 1 of 94)
On 21 December 2022 the UK Supreme Court (Lords Briggs, Hamblen and Leggatt) granted the defendant permission to appeal in the case of George v Cannell. Continue reading
Inforrm reported on a large number of defamation cases from around the world in 2022. Following my widely read posts on 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 defamation cases, this is my personal selection of the most legally and factually interesting cases from England, Australia and Canada from the past year. Continue reading
In McCann and Healy v. Portugal ([2022] ECHR 725)(in French only), the Fourth Section of the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that the applicants’ Article 8 rights had not been violated by the publication of a book, a documentary programme, and a newspaper interview alleging that the applicants’ daughter had died inside their holiday flat and that the applicants had hidden her dead body and fabricated her abduction. Continue reading
SLAPPs, Serious Harm, and the Defamation Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 – Ciaran O’Shiel and Tim Carson
While coverage of strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs, has been amplified by several high-profile defamation actions in the UK and US in recent months, public discourse on the topic has been gathering pace since the assassination, in October 2017, of the investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who, at the time of her death, had 47 open defamation cases in progress against her. Continue reading
Cold winds now blow in the US Supreme Court around the stability of a century’s worth of First Amendment doctrine; even New York Times Co v Sullivan 376 US 254 (1964), the most stable of that Court’s speech precedents, now seems in danger of being blown away in the storm, thanks to the recent decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen 597 US __ (2022) (Opinion pdf | Cornell | Justia | SCOTUSblog). Continue reading
With local, and occasionally, national, politics currently convulsed by the ‘Northern Ireland Protocol’, one could be forgiven for swiftly consigning anything containing those words to the dustbin. Continue reading
On 13 June 2022, in conclusion to what constituted a three-year long and highly publicised legal battle, Mrs Justice Steyn handed down her judgment in the notorious libel claim brought by high-profile businessman and Brexiteer Arron Banks against investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr ([2022] EWHC 1417 (QB)) . Continue reading
Just what exactly is the Government proposing in its recently published Response to the Call for Evidence on Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs)? As one commentator on this forum has pointed out, the ‘devil is in the detail’ of the Response, and the suggested reforms raise ‘more questions than answers’. This is not to question the existence of SLAPPs, or to cast aspersions on the sudden willingness for public debate on the issue. Continue reading
There has been a substantial decline in the number of new claims issued in the Media and Communications List of the Queen’s Bench Division (“the M&C List”) in the first 6 months of 2022. A total of 100 new claims were issued, an annual rate of 200. This is only 35% of the 564 new claims issued in 2021 and 53% of the 373 claims issued in 2020. Continue reading
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