Summary disposal under ss.8-10 Defamation Act 1996 granted in libel claim
Five individual Claimants were awarded damages of £10,000 and one corporate Claimant £5,000 and a permanent injunction restraining the Defendants from publishing the words complained of, along with an order that the Defendants publish an agreed correction and apology (or failing that a summary of the judgment), under the rarely used summary disposal provisions of the Defamation Act 1996, after the Defendants indicated they were no longer defending the claim. The Claimants were also granted summa ...
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A libel claim relating to local newspaper reports of a swingers club losing its alcohol licence were struck out as failing to set out reasonable grounds for bringing the claim and being worth no more than a nominal amount, if anything at all. The claim had no real prospect of success given that the articles complained of were reports of a local government press release and what the Claimant admitted to be true.
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An application to have a claim for libel struck out as an abuse of process after the Claimant received damages and public vindication for the publication of a similar libel in another newspaper was dismissed. The settlement of the other action did not remove the Claimant’s entitlement to compensation in respect of the Defendant’s publications.
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The rule in Derbyshire CC v Times Newspapers Ltd [1993] AC 534 that governmental bodies could not sue for libel did not prevent individuals within such organisations who were referred to and defamed by published words from suing for defamation. Nor had the claim been brought for an impermissible collateral purpose.
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On the basis of the Claimant’s admissions and witness statements it could not be said that a reasonable jury could not fail to find the Claimant’s pleaded defamatory meaning to be true, or that he had behaved in such a way as to make his claim an abuse of process. The Defendant’s application for strike out and/or summary judgment was therefore dismissed.
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An injunction was granted to restrain the Defendant from continuing to publish words as he had threatened to do so, had not indicated that he had any defence and the Claimant was likely to establish at trial that the publication should not be allowed.
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The Court assessed the appropriate sum in damages for libellous postings on internet forums, which stated that the claimant's distance learning courses were a ‘scam’, at £50,000, which was the sum necessary to demonstrate the falsity of the allegations.
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Even if a reader was taken to have read the contents of web pages that could be accessed by clicking on hyperlinks in the words complained of, the words complained of were capable of referring to the Claimant. An application by the Defendants to have the claim struck out on the basis that it did not so refer was therefore dismissed.
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A claim for libel in respect of a letter which it was admitted had been published on an occasion of qualified privilege was struck out as there was no realistic prospect of establishing malice and defeating the defence.
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The Court of Appeal upheld Tugendhat J’s ruling, pursuant to s.69 of the Senior Courts Act 1981, that a libel trial should take place without a jury. The Court reaffirmed the constitutional importance of the right to trial by jury and emphasised that in apply s.69 care should be taken not to give too much independent weight to the increase in time and costs which a jury would involve.
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