The defendant sought a strike out of the claim in defamation, saying that postings made on its web-sites were fair and accurate reports of court proceedings published contemporaneously. The claimant solicitor had been the subject of disciplinary proceedings by the Law Society. The articles had been removed on the day a complaint was made.
Held: The claim was struck out. The fact that a website contains a mixture of content that is user generated and material that is written by or is proactively chosen by the operator of the website does not preclude the operator of the website from relying upon Regulation 19 so far as the user generated content is concerned: ‘the defence which is primarily relied upon is that contained within Regulation 19. I am quite satisfied from the evidence that this defendant is indeed entitled to avail itself of this defence, because it did not have actual knowledge of unlawful activity or information until it was pointed out by the claimant in January of this year. It does not necessarily accept that the activity was unlawful anyway in publishing the article but it was not aware of any complaint until that time. In any event, the material was taken down as I have described on 5 February as soon as the nature of the complaint reached the defendant. It is also clear that the recipient of the service was not acting under the authority or control of the service provider within the meaning of Regulation 19 . . So it seems to me in those circumstances that the defendant is entitled to rely upon that defence.’
Judges:
Eady J
Citations:
[2009] EWHC 3205 (QB)
Links:
Statutes:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Addis v Crocker CA 1961
The proceedings of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal attract absolute privilege even though they sat in private. . .
Cited by:
Cited – Kaschke v Gray and Another QBD 29-Mar-2010
The defendant appealed against the refusal of the Master to strike out the claim in defamation in respect of a post by a third party on his unmoderated blog. The claimant said that the article accused her of an historic association with a terrorist . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Defamation
Updated: 15 September 2022; Ref: scu.381769
