The week in libel
US legislators this week took a major step toward preventing libel tourism when the “Speech” bill was approved by a Senate judiciary committee.
The Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage Act, to give it its full name, would (if passed by the Senate) protect US authors from judgments in foreign courts that contravened the US’s First Amendment right to free speech.
Back in Blighty, Justice minister Lord McNally has confirmed that a draft libel reform bill will be published by March 2011 at the latest – a major step forward in Index’s campaign for libel reform (alongside Sense About Science and English PEN).
In the defamation courts, Ryanair was forced to pay costs and damages to Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder of rival Easyjet, after it ran an ad campaign claiming that Haji-Ionnau was responsible for Easyjet not revealing its “on-time” performance. Stelios pointed out that as he was no longer management at EasyJet, he could not be held accountable. The court agreed.
Meanwhile, in a rather more interesting case, the Times newspaper lost a case brought by Gary Flood, a detective sergeant in the Metropolitan Police, whom it had accused of taking bribes. The Times had initially been allowed to plead the “Reynolds defence” qualified privilege, but subsequently lost that privilege after an investigation exonerated Flood. The case highlights the need for a more robust public interest defence in law than Reynolds — which merely sets up a series of hoops for reporters to jump through, and is only really applicable to well-resourced publications.
Finally, the ruling in the case of Johanna Kaschke versus Alex Hilton, due to be read out in court today, has been postponed.