LIBEL TOURISM: THE COURTS JUMP BEFORE THEY ARE PUSHED


Avaricious lawyers were dealt a blow this week earned by a ruling from Mr Justice Simon. The judge struck out a lawsuit brought by Pavel Karpov, a retired Russian interior ministry investigator, i.e. senior policeman, who was seeking to argue that his reputation had been destroyed by being linked to the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.[1]
Mr Justice Simon
This case had about it all the hallmarks of similar actions brought about by foreign individuals and corporations with little, if any, connection to this country, making use of British libel Law. This practice has proved as lucrative for many British law firms as it has been disastrous for free speech.

As interpreted by the courts our draconian libel laws recognised few boundaries or constraints. This saw a string of foreign nationals, many of them extremely dodgy characters, using British libel law to silence their critics.

‘In many cases, British courts accepted jurisdiction over cases which were not even actionable in the countries where the main publication occurred. The Polish-born film director Roman Polanski used the High Court to sue the American magazine Vanity Fair in 2005 over an article which claimed he had tried to seduce a woman while he was on his way to his wife’s funeral in 1969.[2]’


Polanski, a convicted child sex offender was even permitted to give evidence by video link, lest he face extradition to the US should he attend in person. Polanski was eventually awarded £50,000 damages, and the case is widely held to have seriously damaged Britain’s judicial reputation.

The trend had by this stage  become an international scandal and prompted some American States to pass legislation to prevent  “unreasonable” libel rulings made in British courts infringing on their own freedom of speech.’[3]

Finally parliament slowly began to stir, prompted by a growing campaign for libel law reform. As a consequence a new Defamation Act will come into law next year, making it much harder for litigants from other countries to use UK courts.

This is the context for this weeks ruling. I would like to believe that we have discovered that even the legal profession can blush, however I suspect that they jumped before they were pushed.


[1] See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20626960 The costs of bringing this case are estimated at around £2m, how a mere policeman, not matter how senior, can afford to bring such a case I leave hanging in the air.
[3] Ibid


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