{"id":5902,"date":"2009-10-14T10:54:33","date_gmt":"2009-10-14T10:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=5902"},"modified":"2017-01-09T14:09:06","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T14:09:06","slug":"simon-singh-wins-leave-to-appeal-in-bca-libel-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=5902","title":{"rendered":"Simon Singh wins leave to appeal in BCA libel case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" title=\"singh\" src=\"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/singh.jpg\" alt=\"singh\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" align=\"right\" \/><strong>A court ruling today affirmed science writer Simon Singh&#8217;s right to free expression. It grants him leave to appeal Mr Justice Eady&#8217;s ruling against him in a libel action brought by the British Chiropractic Association, reports <strong>Padraig Reidy<\/strong><\/strong><br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nPopular science writer Simon Singh has been granted leave to appeal in the libel action brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association.<\/p>\n<p>In a scathing rebuttal of Mr Justice Eady\u2019s previous judgement in the case, Lord Justice Laws said Eady had risked swinging the balance of rights too far in favour of the right to reputation and against the right to free expression. Lord Justice Laws described Eady\u2019s judgement, centred on Singh\u2019s use of the word \u201cbogus\u201d in an article published by the Guardian newspaper, as \u201clegally erroneous\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Laws also pointed out that Eady\u2019s judgement had conflated two issues &#8212; the meaning of the phrases complained of, and the issue of whether the article was presented as fact or fair comment.<\/p>\n<p>Laws said there was \u201cno question\u201d of the \u201cgood faith\u201d of Singh in writing the article, as the matter was \u201cclearly in the public interest\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking after the judgement, Singh told Index on Censorship this was the \u201cbest possible result\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut I try not to get my hopes up,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe have only won leave to appeal. Now we must convince the court of appeal on the issue of meaning. There is a long battle ahead. Reform of English libel laws, particularly the right to a public interest defence and a fairer costs structure, are vital.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The BCA was not represented at this morning\u2019s hearing.<\/p>\n<p>Additional reporting S\u00edle Lane<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A court ruling today affirmed science writer Simon Singh&#8217;s right to free expression. It grants him leave to appeal Mr Justice Eady&#8217;s ruling against him in a libel action brought by the British Chiropractic Association, reports <strong>Padraig Reidy<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4,581,21],"tags":[593,165,1119,595],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5902"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5902"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83836,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5902\/revisions\/83836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}