Libel law - Part VI

28 November 2009

The courts of this country have long been regarded as the home of international commercial law disputes. However unlike in other areas the defamation laws have failed to keep pace with the explosion in global interconnectivity. This means that other countries may be looking to the way English courts are feeling able to apply English libel law to claimants with very little if any provable damage in the jurisdiction, and are replicating this, with the Guardian sued in Zimbabwe, and an Indonesian court recently fining Time magazine £50 million.

A brief history of libel tourism in London...

Arnold Schwarzenegger may have started the high profile trend in 1990 flying in from Los Angeles to sue Wendy Leigh, a Florida-based American author, for an unauthorised biography.

The National Enquirer (which I remember seeing in my provincial Sainsburys, at one point), which is based in Miami, ending up blocking British readers after it was successfully sued in London by Cameron Diaz, the Hollywood actress. Her lawyers showed that the article she deemed defamatory had been viewed 279 times by British internet users.

In 2007 a Saudi banker successfully sued an American academic in an English court over a book that had not been published in the UK, but 23 copies of which had been bought over the internet and shipped to Britain. He won 130,000 pounds.

The Index on Censorship and English writer group PEN, have launched a campaign for the reform of English libel law, warning that the current legislation risks turning the country into a "global pariah".

Tim Mount is a trainee solicitor, contactable at tim.mount@lawdit.co.uk