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Law Column: Practical lessons from the JK Rowling case

footansteylogonewLate last week in the Court of Appeal, judgment was handed down in the case of Murray v. Associated Newspapers Limited – better known as the JK Rowling v. Mail Online case.

You may be surprised to learn that this case is still dragging on, but at least there are some practical lessons to be learned from this saga.

As we all probably know, the JK Rowling case arose after the Mail Online published an article claiming to expose the reality behind the writer’s past experiences of being a single-parent.

Lawyers for Rowling argued that the article was defamatory of their client because it meant that she had previously knowingly given a false account of her time as a single mother and had falsely accused her fellow churchgoers of behaving in a “bigoted, unchristian manner” towards her.

At a relatively early stage in the proceedings, the Mail Online made what is known as an “offer of amends”.

This meant that they admitted liability and offered to print an apology, pay an agreed sum in damages and pay the author’s legal costs.

This was not new; it is a well-known tactic in defamation litigation to limit damages and costs. The reason why the case still ended up in the Court of Appeal is that the parties could not agree on the wording of the apology.

The case is newsworthy in its own right, but for working journalists, the real interest in the case lies in the fact that Court of Appeal made it very plain that despite having accepted the offer of amends, she was still entitled to have a statement read out in open court confirming the falsity of the allegations made against her.

The main issue with statements in open court, at least from a Defendant’s perspective, is that they bring the matter firmly to the attention of the public and can be reported in the same way as any other court case.

And whilst it’s true to say that a Defendant can object to the inclusion of certain elements in the statement where it is felt that the Claimant may be “over-egging the pudding”, this can still bring exactly the kind of unwanted publicity that the Defendant publisher will have been trying to avoid in making an early admission of liability.

So the upshot is that if there was any doubt before last week about whether a successful claimant has the right to demand the reading of a statement in open court even if the settlement agreement is silent on this issue, such doubts have been swept aside by the Court of Appeal.

The reforms to libel law introduced by the Defamation Act 2013 have been criticised as being too pro-publisher and anti-claimant. But as this case shows, there is still plenty of room for our law to be considered pro-claimant in the ‘right’ circumstances.

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  • May 20, 2015 at 4:17 am
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    There is more to her so called sob story many question. Mail online never said, she didn’t have one, in my humble opinion. Rowling seems to have an interesting path of suits in the courts. No, I don’t believe her story, and it wasn’t any newspaper that added to my opinions, it was Rowling’s. Enough said.

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