On 1 January 2014 the Defamation Act 2013 (‘the Act’) came into force. At the time, we published an article considering the individual provisions of the Act, and speculating about how the law of defamation had been changed. We first reviewed the practical impact of the Act in 2020, and now do so again, a decade on from the Act first coming into force. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Tag: Brett Wilson Media and Communications Law Blog (Page 2 of 3)
The recent judgment in Dyson v MGN Limited [2023] EWHC 3092, in which the Defendant publisher succeeded in its defence of honest opinion, provides important authority on the interpretation of section 3(4)(a) of the Defamation Act 2013. Continue reading
#MeToo six years on: how the courts are handling sexual misconduct defamation claims – Percy Preston
Whilst the origins of the MeToo movement date back to 2006, the movement exploded in 2017 with the help of a Twitter hashtag. Victims of sexual misconduct across the world were encouraged to speak out. In 2017 we considered the legal issues arising from making allegations of sexual misconduct online and asked whether it was a risky business. Continue reading
In the case of JRV & ARC v BRG [2023] EWHC 2238 (KB) Mr Justice Ritchie granted an interim privacy injunction preventing the publication of information about an extra-marital affair. Continue reading
Defamation lawyers had hoped that the Supreme Court’s judgment in Lachaux v Independent Print Ltd & Anor [2019] UKSC 27 (see our blog here) would provide some much-needed clarity on how section 1 of the Defamation Act 2013 should be interpreted. Prior to Lachaux preliminary issue trials had become something of a bête noire for judges in the Media and Communications List who found themselves having to condemn the disproportionate expense of such trials as well as drawing to the parties’ attention the potential for wasteful duplication of evidence and cross-examination of witnesses if the action proceeded to trial. Continue reading
On 11 July 2023, on the News Agents podcast, broadcaster Jon Sopel asked whether The Sun could be facing “the mother of all libel claims” for publishing allegations against a then unnamed BBC presenter. On 13 July 2023, Vicky Flind confirmed that her husband Huw Edwards was the broadcaster in question. Continue reading
There has long been a tension between the principles of open justice and the desire of parties litigating sensitive matters to keep their identity, parts of the litigation, or even the fact of the litigation itself, private. The default position for almost all civil litigation is that (i) parties are named in proceedings, (ii) non-parties (i.e. members of the public) can obtain copies of core documents from the court, and (iii) hearings are conducted in ‘open’ court (i.e. the public may observe). Continue reading
Three cases heard in the past year in the High Court – George v Cannell [2021] EWHC 2988 (QB), Parris v Ajayi [2021] EWHC 285 (QB) and Kostakopolou v University of Warwick and others [2021] EWHC 3454 (QB) – have raised some of the difficulties confronting claimants who wish to bring a defamation claim in relation to publications made to or by an employer. In this blog post, we look at some of the issues that may arise in claims that have their origins in the workplace. Continue reading
Here we are again. The press doesn’t like us having private lives and the government doesn’t like judges making decisions it disagrees with. These two angsts collided recently following the Court of Appeal’s decision in HRH the Duchess of Sussex v Associated Newspapers Ltd [2021] EWCA Civ 1810. Something, we are told, needs to be done. The answer apparently is (yet again) to abolish the Human Rights Act 1998 and introduce a system whereby the government can review and nullify the effect of binding court decisions. Continue reading
In Sube & Anor v News Group Newspapers Ltd & Anor (Rev 1) [2020] EWHC 1125, Warby J (as he then was) distilled several points that had arisen from the limited number of authorities that have addressed claims for harassment by publication to the world at large (hereinafter simply referred to as ‘harassment by publication’). Continue reading
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