How the British courts bankrupt everybody involved in defamation
LAWYERS AGAIN
I was mean about lawyers last week and was planning to lay off them for a while, but this is important. Non-Brits often struggle to understand why it is that journalists are so terrified of libel proceedings in the U.K. Britain is a democracy. The defamation laws aren’t that much more fearsome than in other European countries, and in fact they’re less fearsome than in some.
Now take the case of journalist Carole Cadwalladr. She wrote and spoke widely about businessman Arron Banks’ support for Brexit and became a hate figure for many on the Leave side as a result. She is a friend of mine, and, in my opinion, much of the criticism of her has been viciously misogynistic and grotesquely disproportionate, but I’m going to try to analyze this dispassionately, so please bear with me. Banks felt that Cadwalladr’s reporting about him was unfair and sued her for defamation, as is his right. After a court initially ruled in her favor, an appeal court found in Banks’ favor (in relation to a TED talk), and she now has to pay 35,000 pounds (about $40,000) in damages. That’s a lot of money, but it’s not terrifying.
Then came the costs.
- “The Court of Appeal has ordered that Carole Cadwalladr must pay 60% of Arron Banks’ legal fees to the tune of 1,242,634 pounds. Having already apologized and coughed up 35,000 pounds in damages, the Court has today ruled she must now find another couple of million down the back of the sofa before the end of the month,” boasted the right-wing blog Guido Fawkes last week.
So, what has happened here? Cadwalladr defamed Banks and caused harm to his reputation, damage assessed by a court to be worth 35,000 pounds. You may agree or disagree with the judgment, and reasonable people can do both, but I don’t think anyone would accuse the judges of having done anything other than their jobs. And I certainly wouldn’t criticize Banks, who was holidaying in Italy, for saying he would celebrate this ruling “like it’s the last of Rome.” I’m sure this has been a stressful time for him, too.