In 1999 The House of Lords made a seismic change to the law of defamation. Its effect was to fortify the power of Fleet Street to libel individuals for profit without sanction, thereby both fundamentally undermining their human rights and permitting the press to persist in promulgating any falsities favoured by editorial agendas. This aberrant judicial law-making was justified by the most monumental intellectual dishonesty. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Tag: Public Interest Defence
Judgment was, today, handed down in the libel case of Noel Clarke v Guardian News and Media [2025] EWHC 2193 (KB). In a 224 page, 1023 paragraph judgment, Mrs Justice Steyn dismissed all Mr Clarke’s claims. She found that Mr Clarke was not a “credible or reliable witness” [128] and the defences of truth and public interest were successful. Continue reading
On 25 June 2024, after a complex preliminary issues trial, Mr Justice Nicklin handed down judgment in the case of Harcombe and Kendrick v Associated Newspapers [2024] EWHC 1523 (KB), dismissing a public interest defence advanced by the publishers of The Mail on Sunday and its health editor, in a libel claim brought against them by Dr Zoë Harcombe and Dr Malcolm Kendrick. Continue reading
On 17 May 2023, the Court of Appeal made its final order [pdf] in the long running Banks v Cadwalladr case. After receiving written representations from the parties, the Court ordered the defendant, Carole Cadwalladr to pay 60% of Arron Banks’ costs of the trial and one third of his costs in the Court of Appeal. Continue reading
This is Part 2 of a post discussing the judgment in Banks v Cadwalladr. This final part deals with the impact meaning and intention had on the defences open to the defendant, specifically the public interest defence. Part 1 can be found here. Continue reading
I make the case in Part 1 of this post that there are good policy reasons why Section 1(2) of the Defamation Act 2013 (“the 2013 Act”) does not always best serve the public interest. However even if the Section 1(2) hurdle were absent, a corporate claimant whose product or business practices have wrongly been attacked is likely then to be confronted with a “public interest” defence under Section 4. Continue reading
On 21 November the Court of Appeal delivered a major decision on the statutory public interest defence for defamation claims, in the case of Alexander Economou v David de Freitas [2018] EWCA Civ 2591. Continue reading
The UK, Canada, and New Zealand have developed a broader qualified privilege public interest defence … Australia lags in this development, although there are special local impediments … Durie v Gardiner in NZ holds there is nothing special about government or political speech that should not be applied to the protection of all speech … Waiting for the proper case in Australia … Professor David Rolph comments. Continue reading
The Defamation Act 2013 replaces Reynolds privilege with a new defence of ‘publication on matter of public interest’. On one view, the statutory defence aims to provide a broader protection for expression than was previously found under the common law. Continue reading
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