Alex Hilton deserves no money and no sympathy for his legal battle
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Dear Alex Hilton
Apologies for sending this letter a couple of days late, but I feel that your apparent confusion still warrants a letter – and may I say what a fine mess you’ve got yourself into. As the owner of LabourHome, you published an article from a LabourHome user about a former party member who had defected to Respect, only for this individual to take offence at what was written. Now that you and the author of this article are being sued by said offended individual, you have gone grovelling to your LabourHome readers to ask for financial help in meeting your legal fees in this court case. Time to grow up, Mr Hilton.
Before I get to the specifics, it is worth taking a broader look at legal issues in the blogosphere. Many ill-informed journalist and pundits have criticised political blogs in the past on the grounds that we have too much freedom and have no boundaries set on what we can write because it’s online rather than in print. To this day, I’m not sure how these idiots reached such a conclusion. Libel laws in this country apply to words written online as they do elsewhere. The onus is on an author (such as yourself or this other LabourHome user) to prove the truth of any comments or allegations that you make, which seems sensible to me because it stops people from making unsubstantiated claims. The claimant (in this case, the disgruntled subject of the article on LabourHome) does not need to show that you or the author acted out of malice, which is equally important because ignorance is not an excuse for writing or publishing libellous material. You would do well to remember that.
Your defence is that once you were contacted by the ‘offended person’, you took the article off your website and offered them the right to reply. Errr, hello? Since when does removing an offensive article of a website make you the good guy? What kind of a defence is that?! That’s like saying that you wrote an article about an MP being caught in a comprimising position with several farmyard animals, but that’s ok because once the MP saw the article you took it down and offered them a right to reply to the allegation that they were caught in a comprimising position with several farmyard animals. Like I said, ignorance is not an excuse for writing libellous material. What a wonderful irony it is that a little while ago, you harrassed a Conservative university student for publishing an article online about the death of an MP. Even though she quickly realised the mistake that she’d made in how she worded her message and edited the original article, you still heckled her for several days afterwards and even included a screenshot of the original article on your website just to rub salt in the wound. Sounds like you want the best of the both worlds – you harrass other people when they make mistakes online but you want sympathy and money when it happens to you.
Your lawyer has apparently informed you that the case against you is unlikely to be successful yet you come crawling to your readers to get them to bail you out of a problem that you created yourself out of sheer incompetence. You have the audacity to plead to LabourHome readers that “I built Labourhome two and a half years ago as an open forum for Labour supporters because I believed it was needed [and] I’m in court because of the freedom of this forum.” Outrageous. If you create a forum that is so free and so lacking in editorial control that people can publish libellous material on it, you are the only person to blame. It’s appalling that you have played the sympathy card to con your readers into picking up the tab for your idiocy. Similarly shocking are some of the comments at the bottom of the article: Northern Monkey said “The person shouldn’t be allowed to carry on with legal action if you pulled the post in question and offered him the right to reply” – of course they should be allowed to carry on! You can’t claim innocence after publishing offensive material just because you took the article down later. Jkitleft said “Stupid bloody libel laws, they really are a disgrace” – no, they are not. Our laws are designed to protect people and I’m happy to let a court decide whether or not the article in question broke our libel laws.
What amazes me most about this incident is your pathetic abdication of responsibility for the website that you own. Perhaps if you spent as much time banning ‘Tory Trolls’ like me (i.e. Conservatives who disagree with Labour all the time) from LabourHome as you did reading through submissions to your website, this problem wouldn’t have occured in the first place. Unlike you, Mr Hilton, I have the guts to stand up for anything that I write on this blog and if I allow other people to write for a website that I own, you can bet your a*** that I will read through every word that they publish to make sure that I don’t get myself into trouble. I am horrified that you think this is somehow not your fault and that you deserve sympathy for a situation that you created by yourself. The fact that you published something from another author on LabourHome which turned out to be dodgy is the result of your foolishness – grow up and accept it.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
You normally post quite sensible pieces. This little piece of spiteful bile is demeaning and does you no credit.
“I am horrified that you think this is somehow not your fault and that you deserve sympathy for a situation that you created by yourself. “
He’s just following the line all his kind take when caught – ‘Not me, guv, someone else did it/my subordinates are at fault’.
See Ian Blair, Jacqui Smith, Susan Shoesmith, etc, etc
“my lawyer says I have an absolute defence under Section One of the Defamation Act”
Right then, write a witness statement explaining that, file it with a form N244, ask for a Hearing on a strikeout application. Job done. No worries.
If you want to be really cunning, send them a Part 36 offer of £1 damages, timed to expire just before the Hearing.
If you can’t afford your lawyer’s fees for all that, talk to other lawyers. Look for junior lawyers who want to make their name with a precedent-setting judgement. Or represent yourself – it’s not difficult. Anyone with a reasonable degree of intelligence can do it.
Think laterally. Take responsibility. Solve the problem. People in the private sector do it every day.
Thank you Bob for your eloquent and enlightening critique of my post.
The fact that you didn’t bother trying to counter any of my arguments has been noted.
Julia, I didn’t make the link to Jacqui Smith but now that you mention it Labour are certainly picking up some momentum in blaming everyone else. I bow to Patently’s better judgement on legal matters! Unfortunately, ‘taking responsibility’ is an alien concept to Labour.
Rather than asking for money to cover legal fees online, shouldn’t he just ask for legal advice from LabourHome members? If people such as patently have good advice to offer, surely his illustrious readership would be able to come up with some free help and guidance?
One day, we’ll get used to this ‘internet communication’ thing…
[...] A. Tory isn’t donating anything to Alex Hilton [...]
Good question. Playing the victim is sickening, especially when he could have followed your suggestion and not dragged his readers into his own self-inflicted problems.
Or perhaps his readership is not quite as illustrious as you suspect….
Stu – no chance. All we see is the kneejerk response of the left, applicable to any problem: “Can those who were prudent enough not get themselves into trouble in this way, please give me some money”.
Then, the message that he should go away and solve his own problem through his own efforts is described as “demeaning spiteful bile”. Ho hum.
Another reason why the lefty blogs all fail over here. These people just can’t play nice! Once again we are treated to the spectacle of ‘the smaller the prize, the harder the fight’ as these poor saps continue with their delusional self-importance.
Guido rakes professional grade muck and yet doesn’t end up in court. His commenters, not to mention those here or on Dale are all pretty vociferous and yet nobody’s running to the law, no more than you would if someone called you a ‘c*nt’ down at the pub.
LFAT, you don’t understand how defamation law works with reference to online forums.
If Hilton had approved the piece in question, he’d be liable as its publisher. But if 1) a defamatory piece is posted by a website user; 2) there is no editorial/approval process before the piece appears; and 3) the website’s owner takes the piece down as soon as they are notified that it was defamatory, then they are not liable. That’s what he means by an absolute defence under Section 1.
For example, if I were to write “Mr XXX blows donkeys” in the comments section here, then you’d only be liable if Mr XXX complained and you refused to take the piece down. If Mr XXX filed a frivolous lawsuit against you anyway (alongside his legitimate lawsuit against me), would you accept that you deserved the legal costs and hassle for running a site “so free and so lacking in editorial control that people can publish libellous material on it”?
Hilton’s problem is that he’s having to spend a lot on legal fees despite having a watertight case. While there may be ways round it (and ‘patently’ above may have one), this is a real problem and it’s got nothing to do with flaw in Hilton’s editorial judgement.
“would you accept that you deserved the legal costs and hassle for running a site “so free and so lacking in editorial control that people can publish libellous material on it”?”
John B
Its not a clear cut thing; that even web hosting companies panic about being caught on the chain of liability is clear – look what happened a few weeks ago to Harry’s Place when he annoyed some litigious person over their alleged sympathies.
The simple fact is that if you take the conscious decision to allow people to post comments without approval, and it is a *decision* since almost all blogging software comes with some options for comment control and moderation, then you are in a sense responsible for the things people post there. Your blog is, in this sense, a publication only its not just you doing the publishing. There is insufficient caselaw to support anything but a very cautious interpretation of libel liability in these cases.
As with forums, I advise web clients that its a balancing act between perceived user freedom/community spirit and their exposure to liability and associated costs of policing content not generated by themselves.
Well said Shaun, beat me to it.
John B, Alex Hilton set up an entire website with no editorial process and is now complaining that a full article published on the website he owns said some naughty things. What a surprise! I have a filter for swear words on this site that blocks any comments using such language and I also read through every single comment published on my blog to make sure that it is acceptable. If Alex can’t be bothered to check the material on his website before it’s published, why does he deserve money from anyone?
If he has a watertight case, so be it – I couldn’t care less. The outcome of the court case is neither here nor there. What I am objecting to is him playing the victim with his readers, trying to make it sound as if he is doing nothing but making the world a better place but has been cruelly taken advantage of by the author of this dodgy article – which is pathetic.
The fact that he had no sympathy for a Conservative university student who made a mistake when writing on her website (in fact, he taunted her for days about it), even though she changed her website entry as soon as she realised her error, makes his behaviour even more distasteful.
Don’t get me wrong; the situation is a total mess. The old rules of libel said that if I gave you a document making libellous claims and you then took that and posted it up on a noticeboard in your pub, you were liable for republishing. With web technology I make a libellous comment on your website, you are republishing it, the web host/blog platform are involved in republishing it and there’s arguable liability for ISPs that provide access to it. The very nature of the technology is encompassed fully within the nature of the legal analogies used to determine attribute of liability.
In the course of things, case law will eventually hammer this out to some kind of common sense. But that will be very slow; maybe generational and I don’t really know if we can afford to wait for that to happen. On the other hand, there’s not a single politician or civil servant I’d trust with drafting any kind of law at all that even walked down the same street as free speech! In those circumstances, its possible than a slow and painful process over a few decades may be better for our society than a botched attempt to ascribe liability in matters of speech.
“If Alex can’t be bothered to check the material on his website before it’s published, why does he deserve money from anyone?”
Because the law says (much more clearly than Shaun is implying) that if you don’t check the material, but remove it as soon as you’re made aware of it, you’re not liable for it. Hence, he deserves money because – despite having obeyed the law – he’s now having to fight a lawsuit he shouldn’t have to fight.
“The fact that he had no sympathy for a Conservative university student who made a mistake when writing on her website”
She didn’t ‘make a mistake’, she celebrated someone’s death.
“Because the law says (much more clearly than Shaun is implying) that if you don’t check the material, but remove it as soon as you’re made aware of it, you’re not liable for it”
Which case would that be from? Or is there a statute? As I understand it there are very, very few cases in this area and most of the issues involved have not been directly (or, often, even indirectly) explored. For example, say you are aware of something and happily participating in the defamation of a 3rd party, would it be right for the web-host to still be liable as a re-publisher? And why? What about if the host pulls your site due to a complaint that you don’t accept. Have they acted legally or has your right to free speech been prejudiced?
These issues have not be resolved and so its by no means clear that Alex has obeyed the law since the law is uncertain. What remains patently clear, though, is that it was his policy of not moderating comments that got him into this mess and that was perfectly foreseeable even if you subscribe to a particularly benign version of the libel laws. Laws which, you should note, are in something of an expansive phase…
john b does raise an interesting point about the culpability of bloggers for what commentors write on their blogs. A common sense way of thinking about it would be that bloggers shouldn’t be forced to take responsibility for what is written on their blogs, but we should probably all put disclaimers to that effect on the site, just ion case. What I find interesting is this: what about anonymity? My own blog is not anonymous in the slightest, but what if LFaT put up an untrue and defamatory story about me? (to take an example at random, of course – I’m sure you’d never do such a thing)
It’s at this point that your somewhat tenuous ‘right’ to blog anonymously conflicts hugely with my genuine right to protect myself and my name from a libellous besmirching (which sounds awfully unpleasant at the best of times). Where exactly would I go to learn your identity and seek legal action against you? It’s only because Alex Hilton blogs under his real name that it’s so easy for an external party to put such pressure on him.
Thank you Shaun (again).
John, you clearly have lots of sympathy for Alex and, just like Alex, you are refusing to acknowledge that he got himself into this legal mess and in the name of something I like to call ‘personal responsibility’ he should sort it out himself instead of presenting himself as the victim – which is precisely what he is trying to do. His unbelievably crass blog post, in which he wimpers like a small child despite having dished out plenty of abuse in the past for what people write on their websites, is just beyond belief. And if the law is so clear I find it hard to understand why anyone would take legal action against Alex if they were facing certain doom in a court of law.
“She didn’t ‘make a mistake’, she celebrated someone’s death.”
If that is what you think, fair enough (I strongly disagree, btw) – but on the grounds that anyone who puts something on their website should therefore accept all the consequences, Alex deserves no money and no sympathy either. You can’t have it both ways and neither can Alex, although he’s obviously trying to.
And Stu, you never know, you might be next….
“if the law is so clear I find it hard to understand why anyone would take legal action against Alex if they were facing certain doom in a court of law.”
You seem like a well-connected, articulate sort, so I assume you’re socially acquainted with one or two lawyers. Next time you meet one, ask them about litigants in person, and their general sanity levels – this will give you a pretty good idea.
The law says:
a website host will have a defence to a claim for libel if he can show that (i) he was not the author, editor or publisher of the statement complained of, (ii) he took reasonable care in relation to its publication, and (iii) he did not know and had no reason to believe that what he did caused or contributed to the publication of the defamatory statement.
Case law has defined “deleting comments as soon as you’re notified of their defamatory nature” as “reasonable care”, in cases such as Murray vs Spencer.
What about if the host pulls your site due to a complaint that you don’t accept. Have they acted legally or has your right to free speech been prejudiced?
There’s no ‘right to free speech’ in the sense you’re using here. At worst, they may be in breach of their commercial contract with you – but even that is unlikely, as most hosting companies reserve the right to terminate your contract in the event of legal action against you (whether or not you’re in the wrong).
what about anonymity? My own blog is not anonymous in the slightest, but what if LFaT put up an untrue and defamatory story about me?
You serve a writ on his blog host. If they’re in the UK (or have UK assets that could be seized), they’ll have to give you LFaT’s personal details or be in contempt of court. If they aren’t and don’t, then you’re stuffed.
a website host will have a defence to a claim for libel if he can show that (i) he was not the author, editor or publisher of the statement complained of, (ii) he took reasonable care in relation to its publication, and (iii) he did not know and had no reason to believe that what he did caused or contributed to the publication of the defamatory statement.
Well in that case he’s buggered. Hilton published the article, he made no attempt to stop or even bother to check the article and he owns the website that it was published on.
I don’t think the Murray vs Spencer case is a good example, seeing as it was concerning comments made on an online forum. The article on LabourHome was not a ‘comment’ or passing remark and LabourHome is not an online forum in the same manner as Friends Reunited – as I understand it, it was a full article written about an individual which Alex Hilton (who owned the website) did nothing to prevent nor absolve himself of responsibility for with his care and attention.
“a website host will have a defence to a claim for libel if he can show that (i) he was not the author, editor or publisher of the statement complained of,”
Sorry, John but publisher means, in law, providing a platform for publication. So if you have a blog and I defame someone on its comments tool, then you are still the publisher. Is there case-law on that, and if so, anything more recent than 2002?
“Have they acted legally or has your right to free speech been prejudiced?
There’s no ‘right to free speech’ in the sense you’re using here. At worst, they may be in breach of their commercial contract with you – but even that is unlikely, as most hosting companies reserve the right to terminate your contract in the event of legal action against you (whether or not you’re in the wrong).”
Article 10 of the ECHR says otherwise. Although admittedly they say ‘expression’ and not speech, presumably to avoid offending deaf mutes…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights#Art._10_-_expression
So my basic points stand – that this is an ill defined area of law with few citable cases making the area a complete muddle and Alex unwise for taking the view that he did, especially if it was on the basis of a 6 year old case from a County Court which does not by definition set precedent for lower courts, let alone higher ones.
“To this day, I’m not sure how these idiots reached such a conclusion”.
Wouldn’t the answer be in the question?
Ok, you’ve got me there.
Fact is, the offending article drew most of its facts from a post on my blog. I am also being sued by the same litigant.
Everything in both my piece and the piece based on it is totally documented, and therefore covered by defences of justification and fair comment.
I know Tories aren’t too hot on solidarity, but this is time to show some. Believe me, the woman concerned is no credit to the Conservative Party, as you will discover if she continues as a member.
“I know Tories aren’t too hot on solidarity, but this is time to show some. Believe me, the woman concerned is no credit to the Conservative Party, as you will discover if she continues as a member.”
Dave Osler
But you, sir, aren’t shaking folks down for cash while slagging off people who’ve done what you did.
Fair play to you for standing by your statements and seeing this through – hopefully you too will be a litigant in person. That will save precious court time and lay what will inevitably be a ‘he said, she said’ case bare faster than if you had lawyers on a daily rate.
Its not about solidarity, its about common sense; my criticism was of Hilton for his distinctly risky attitude to blog comments. I had no idea about you but am happy to wish you well in your defence of justice since you are happy to stand by your statements and not trying to hide behind someone else!
Dave, if someone is taking the p*** and throwing a stupid lawsuit against you then that’s a complete waste of everyone’s time (but hopefully not your money in the long run).
My objection to Mr Hilton’s plea was (a) he screwed over a young Conservative girl for writing something on her website, even though she later realised her error and altered her website accordingly, (b) he pleaded that he was a wonderful selfless human being by starting LabourHome and therefore deserves money which is b*******, and (c) he owns the website that the article was published on but somehow claims that he has nothing to do with it.
To be honest Dave, I think you’re a brilliant blogger and probably the best Labour blogger around. You blog thoughtfully, respectfully and with Labour principles at heart and you deserve huge credit for doing so – I am sorry that you’ve been dragged into this. Hilton, on the other hand, is the maker of his own downfall.
I would like to know how I can donate to the fighting fund of the lady who is suing Hilton and Osler?
As I just posted on Iain Dale’s diary, though not sure if this comment will be ‘approved’ by Iain
So here it is again:
The decent person in this case is not Hilton, who frankly deserves to lose bigtime in court. LabourHome is a scurrilous anti-Tory website which often carries lies and more lies.
I disagree with Weasel’s comments. The lady who is suing:
- she was disaffected with Labour because of its moral and ethical bankruptcy;
- she joined Respect rather than jumping straight to the Tories;
- she later realised that the Conservatives (as most recently demonstrated by David Davis’s recent stand) is providing moral and ethical leadership where Labour does not; and
- she is perfectly justified in suing Hilton/LabHome.
May LabourHome be closed down as a result.
Wilted Rose, behave yourself!
The outcome of the case is not my concern. It is the behaviour of Alex Hilton that I find so disgusting.
I agree, LFAT, that Hilton’s behaviour is disgusting.
LFAT, Thanks to you and your commenters. There’s a lot of good advice here. I also appreciate the well-formed criticisms.
I understand with Recess Monkey I have put myself in the crosshairs of a lot of Tories, and I am comfortable being there. But Labourhome really isn’t my mouthpiece and was never designed to be so. Apart from informational stuff, I think I have written about six articles this year on my actual opinions. I try to keep the site vibrant and useful to its readers but ultimately it’s their space. I have always followed up complaints from people but I didn’t consider I had responsibility for Labourhome articles any more than Facebook is responsible for my status updates.
I suppose a court will tell me whether I have made a big mistake there
Thanks again
Alex
Glad you found Shaun and john’s exchanges useful – they clearly know more about the legal aspects than I do. This is a really important legal area because big sites like Liberal Conspiracy presumably have a similar setup to LabourHome with multiple authors who appear to write whatever they want when they want.
Facebook is not owned by you, Alex, which is why I think the responsibility should be yours with LabourHome. If you made a genuine legal mistake then that’s a separate issue – I still don’t see how that justifies what you wrote on LabourHome about this situation.
I have no particular wish to see you lose the case – it’s what you wrote and how you wrote it that really got to me.
“I understand with Recess Monkey I have put myself in the crosshairs of a lot of Tories, and I am comfortable being there.”
That’s not the point; the point is that you took a demonstrably risky approach to your comments policy and now you choose to beg that your readers financially support your defence. I don’t really care what you believe as I’m a libertarian and believe in the free market of ideas. I regret that your optimistic approach to comment moderation has been about 20 years ahead of the law and that you may now be a bit of roadkill on our way to the legal future of the web and I sincerely hope that your demise does not deter other people of the left from venturing on to the internet from the UK as that would lead to our blogosphere being a very boring, unchallenging place. And being unchallenged is good for no-one!
I have to congratulate you on being one of those that have chosen to make a stand based on what is right, instead of this ridiculous stance that many are taking that blogs, blogging and online content and contributors are somehow sacrosanct. This silly stance has resulted in much discussion that could have been avoided along the lines of bloggers consider themselves above the law of others. If we want to be accepted as being as good as MSM then we should act like it.
But to Hilton…I had a blog for a long time and a long time ago, relatively speaking, and remember Hilton well from the early days as an annoying and deliberately vicious and vindictive individual in support of Labour. That it has taken this long for him to perhaps get his just rewards is amazing. I hope he does get sued and loses. This is not just Tories but everyone as Hilton is the type who gives bloggers a very bad name. I well remember his glee at announcing Thatchers death, amongst other issues of an unpalatable nature.
a website host will have a defence to a claim for libel if he can show that (i) he was not the author, editor or publisher of the statement complained of, (ii) he took reasonable care in relation to its publication, and (iii) he did not know and had no reason to believe that what he did caused or contributed to the publication of the defamatory statement.
John B, is this is Hiltons defence, then he has lost already. Hilton is not the host; he is the owner, has full editorial control, and is the publisher in full if he gives a contributor access to publish on his website, and ergo, in law, is also the author. He also obviously did not take reasonable care in relation to its publication. He had reason to believe defamation had been written as a statement, otherwise, why give a right to reply to an article he had legal responsibility for?
I must say I’ve heard a lot of hot air from you and you seem to be getting very mixed up about what exactly Hiltons role is in regards his website, and I sincerely hope you are not representing him.
BTW: There are many good reason why a person might be a litigant in person, one of which is because they have been advised to save their money as they may not be able to recoup costs, which seems to be the case here seeing as Hilton is whining and crying for scraps. Also, if there are screen-shots which cannot be argued against and these are presented as evidence against a defence, then why pay for a barrister when a solicitor would do as an advisor on what prima facae looks to be a water tight case?
Just a thought.
(comment deleted for breaking the rules of this blog)
“*.”
…is a good example of a defamatory (libellous) comment, prima facie.
This is compounded by the fact that it lacks any supporting evidence of any sort. I’d recommend taking it down ASAP! And editing this one.
Or argue that at worst its mere vulgar abuse or, in the alternative, it was clearly a joke post as could be inferred from the context of the remark and the obviously mischievous nature of the poster. But, legally speaking, I’d advise that you don’t ever rely on someone else to have common sense, let alone act on it!
Thanks LFAT
Look, we all do posts along the lines of ‘X did something months/years ago, therefore is a pr*ck and cannot legitimately say Y now.’ I do it myself.
But this is not – in logic – a correct argument. Say what you like about Alex Hilton’s previous posts, in his current libel action he has truth on his side.
I am quite encouraged, in a way, to see bloggers standing together on this one across party lines.
If bloggers can get sued because of what commenters write, then we are all in deep sh*t.
Dave
LoL
Deleting a defamatory comment after it’s been published to a third party does not protect you from legal action. You may have rules, but if those rules fail to prevent publication you are liable for the consequences.
That said I’ve just checked your rules:
No swearing.
No inappropriate or abusive remarks.
No spamming.
That is all.
Which were broken?
“No inappropriate or abusive remarks” perhaps?
Thank you Shaun for pointing out the blindingly obvious.
My comment space is for debate, discussion and arguments. It is not for people to be deliberately facetious and spout totally incorrect statements about legal processes that to this day remain highly debatable (which you’d know if you bothered to read the comments earlier in the thread).
Any further comments that do not contribute to this debate and merely seek to pester either myself or fellow commenters will be deleted on the grounds of being totally inappropriate and completely pointless. I hope that is clear.
(comment deleted for breaking the rules of this blog)
“I must say I’ve heard a lot of hot air from you”
No, you’ve heard me quote statute and case law, which is more than anyone else has bothered to do. There are no precedents of someone being held to be the author/editor/publisher of unmoderated web comments that were deleted on notification; there are precedents of people being held *not* to be the author/editor/publisher in these cases.
There are no precedents concerning unmoderated group blogs – the question is whether LH is seen as analogous to a comment board, or to an edited magazine.
“and you seem to be getting very mixed up about what exactly Hiltons role is in regards his website, and I sincerely hope you are not representing him.”
I know exactly what Hilton’s role is, both by his reputation and for reasons I can’t go into here. I’m not a lawyer and I’m not representing him in any capacity.
“Facebook is not owned by you, Alex, which is why I think the responsibility should be yours with LabourHome”
Aye; nobody’s suggesting that Alex should be responsible for Facebook. But under your argument Mark Zuckerberg /would/ be held legally responsible for everything anyone ever wrote there, even if it were deleted immediately on notification. That is not how the law works, and IMO it’s not how the law should work either.
Oh – “may LabourHome be closed down as a result.”
It won’t: it’s owned by Progressive Media Group, not by Alex. Even if the plaintiff were to win £100,000,000 damages against him and he were bankrupted, the site would be unaffected.
“No, you’ve heard me quote statute and case law, which is more than anyone else has bothered to do. ”
Which statute? And also, any binding case-law, or just 6 year old judgements from a non-binding lower court like the County Court you cite in your link to Murray v Spencer (http://www.out-law.com/page-2621)? As it stands, the law on republishing is perfectly clear. This is why in tradition libel cases against newspapers, you could do the printers and distributors as well as the original publisher.
Better late than never, but just to set the record straight. Regardless of what you think of him Alex is the innocent party in all this. I posted the original story on Labourhome. It did not at all liable the claimant. But Alex did take it down as soon as she complained. But she is still suing him. By all means she could sue me (she is) but if she was to win against Labourhome then I cannot see how any blogs can allow unmoderated posts or comments. Even if you moderate beforehand (as I do on my site) you could face utterly spurious legal action. Check out http://grayee.blogspot.com/2008/12/being-sued-for-libel-by-disrespectful.html
Thanks for your comment. I don’t think she will win, and she shouldn’t win, but that doesn’t excuse Alex’s behaviour.
This goes well beyond a simple legal action in terms of his post and his conduct, as I tried to explain in my letter.
Hi LFAT
But what if she does? She is trying to get a Jury trial, while her case is in my view nonsense, how would you cope with this if she made the same allegations against you?
She has warned me she will bankrupt me and that I will lose my home?
I’m pretty confident that things will ok, but am amazed at the general compliancy by the wider blogging community.
They’re just standard threats, John. At Law School they tell you that if your client is being sued by someone on legal aid, you’re better off giving in as if you fight and win, they still have to pay their own costs. That should roughly tell you how this kind of game is played.
The correct response to the ‘I will bankrupt you’ line is the ‘Are you quite sure you want these allegations heard in open court as a matter of public record? Are you quite ready for what will happen to you if a Jury finds them true? Really?’ Look at the Irving Libel case for a good example of unintended consequences.
She has warned me she will bankrupt me and that I will lose my home?
Shaun is right. Get those comments in an open and recorded form, then make sure they are raised in open court.
“Ms xxx, what is the purpose of this litigation?”
“To secure recognition for the wrong done to me”
“So why have you stated that your aim is to bankrupt me? How will that assist? Or is this litigation pursued simply out if spite?”
“…”
“Are you a spiteful and malicious kind of person? The sort who might have done exactly what my article said you did?”
… etc.