Recently in Defamation Category

Those who want to see libel law reformed in the UK were left in a buoyant mood yesterday after the Government performed a U-turn and ended up supporting House of Lords proposals to prevent companies from suing individuals unless they can show that defamatory comments caused them genuine financial harm, reports The Independent.

The Government had announced on Monday that it would vote against House of Lords proposals to prevent big companies opposing critics by threatening dissent with costly litigation.

However, yesterday Justice Minister Helen Grant indicated that the Government has had a change of heart and is now considering supporting the idea so that it becomes law.

A group of leading writers, including actor and presenter Stephen Fry and the author Salman Rushdie have signed a letter addressed to the UK's leading political parties urging them to continue to pursue crucial reforms to the law on defamation, reports the BBC.

Reform of the libel laws in the United Kingdom has been on the political agenda for decades.

Critics of the current, long-standing libel laws argue that it protects defendants far too much, makes defending cases impossibly expensive and in doing so stifles genuine criticism and scientific debate.

Stephen Lloyd, MP for East Sussex, has won an appeal against a High Court ruling that a claim he made about his predecessor was defamatory, reports the BBC.

Liberal Democrat Mr Lloyd won the East Sussex seat in the 2010 general election with a majority of 3,435.

Following his victory his predecessor, Conservative MP Nigel Waterson, launched libel proceedings in the High Court over the campaign leaflets Mr Lloyd had distributed during his election campaign.

Lord McAlpine, the Tory peer falsely linked with a paedophile ring, has announced that he will not pursue legal action against Twitter users with 500 followers or fewer.

He has refused, however, to drop his case against Sally Bercow, wife of Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow, who has more than 50,000 followers on the social media site, reports The Evening Standard.

The Conservative peer Lord McAlpine has decided to drop his libel case against several Twitter users who linked his name with a paedophile ring operating in Wales. The peer wrote to those concerned to say he wanted to "draw a line" under the matter and invited them to donate £25 to the charity Children in Need.

Senior MPs and members of the House of Lords have warned the Government that its plans to introduce new laws to stop internet 'trolling' may have a 'chilling effect' on the right of free speech.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights, the cross-party committee that looks at all matters relating to human rights, warned that reform to libel laws could force website operators like Twitter to remove offensive content, even if that content was not in breach of the law.

The Defamation Bill, which is due to go through the committee stage in the House of Lords on 17 December, has faced considerable criticism during its passage through Parliament.

The comedian Freddie Starr failed in an attempt to prevent newspapers from broadcasting allegations against him, which appeared in the news last week.

Mr Starr stands accused of molesting a 14-year-old girl, Karin Ward, in the dressing room of TV presenter Jimmy Savile in the 1970s.

Mr Savile, who died last year, is currently the subject of a police investigation into claims that he committed numerous sexual offences against young girls during the sixties, seventies and eighties.

Tomorrow sees the report stage and the commencement of the hotly anticipated Defamation Bill in the House of Commons.

The bill aims to bring defamation law in the UK into the 21^st century with a range of measures designed to be compatible with modern communication methods.

One of the crucial realms of debate within defamation law has been the use of the law to stifle genuine scientific debate. This prompted television science presenter and former D:Ream keyboard player Professor Brian Cox to hand a 60,000-name petition to Government. The petition called on Parliament to insert a 'public interest' defence provision into the new act. As of yet however, such a defence has not been drafted into the Bill.

Television physicist Professor Brian Cox yesterday handed a petition to Downing Street calling for a public interest defence in defamation cases to protect the science community from spurious litigation.

Professor Cox heads a group of scientists including Simon Singh and Dr Peter Wilmshurst who argue that the current libel laws hinder debate on important topics which are in the public's best interest including the validity and efficacy of new medical therapies.

Singh was involved in a major libel case in 2010 after commenting on the work of chiropractors in a column in the Guardian newspaper.

The Government has used this week's Queen's speech to announce plans to use the next parliamentary session to bring in new libel laws. The new defamation bill aims to abolish jury trials, curb online defamation and reduce so-called 'libel tourism'.

The amendments are being welcomed by many, who say that UK libel law is out of date and too expensive.

Lord Mawhinney is the chairman of the joint Commons and Lords committee on the draft defamation bill.

Five Supreme Court judges yesterday unanimously found in favour of the publishers of The Times newspaper, in a case which appears to restore the defence of 'public interest' in libel cases.

The case was brought by Detective Gary Flood, who works for the Metropolitan police extradition unit. He claimed that he was libelled in a Times article written in 2006 concerning the extradition of Russian oligarchs.

The article claimed that the detective had accepted money to disclose confidential extradition information to a private security firm, ISC Global. Clients of the firm included Russian businessmen who were the subject of extradition requests.

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Draft Defamation Bill has called for libel cases to only be heard by a judge rather than a jury, unless the case involves senior public figures.

The committee also proposed in their report that steps should be taken to reduce the cost of bringing a defamation claim, and to clarify the law regarding online defamation.

The report claimed that defamation law should be more accessible and easier to understand.

When TV game show enthusiast Simon Curtis appeared on BBC's Mastermind in 2006, he probably did not expect to become the programme's worst-performing contestant in a specialist-subject round, scoring only one correct answer out of 25.

But he certainly didn't expect to face further ridicule at the hands of David Walliams who replayed the clip of Mr Curtis's poor performance on his Channel 4 show 'Awfully Good TV' and described him as "astoundingly thick".

Introducing the clip on his programme in January, Mr Walliams said: "Sometimes in life, you have to know your limitations. If you're not, let's say, very bright, it's probably not a good idea to go on a quiz show that tests your mental agility. And by not very bright, I mean astoundingly thick."

The BBC's Top Gear programme has landed itself in trouble again over comments and footage featured on the show in December 2008.

Californian-based company Tesla, which manufactures the world's fastest electric car, is suing the BBC for defamation and malicious falsehood.

Tesla is taking action over an episode that tested its Tesla Roadster against a petrol-fuelled car, the Lotus Elise. The drag race between the two was hailed as the "ultimate test for an electric car."

The Justice Minister Kenneth Clarke is to publish a draft Defamation Bill today aimed at protecting freedom of expression and curbing 'libel tourism' in England and Wales.

'Libel tourism' refers to wealthy foreign individuals suing for libel in the English courts under tenuous links, as the law here more 'claimant friendly' than that in other parts of the world. However, it has the effect of restricting freedom of expression in the UK.

The Bill aims to restrict libel tourism by only allowing foreign individuals to sue for libel in England and Wales if they can show the defamatory publication has 'substantially harmed' their reputation in England and Wales.

A senior banker has been granted an injunction by the High Court that allows his identity and the nature of an affair he has been having with a married colleague to be kept out of the media.

The injunction was granted by the court on Tuesday March 1 against the Sun newspaper. The injunction, also known as a 'gagging order', means the tabloid will not be able to reveal the banker's identity or the details of the affair.

Injunctions of this nature are usually sought by famous sportsmen or celebrities trying to save their public reputation. Damaging stories reported in the papers can have a serious effect on their public image and earning capacity, and therefore injunctions are frantically applied for by their lawyers.