Yeo v Times Newspapers Ltd: QBD 25 Nov 2015

The claimant alleged defamation by the defendant as to his conduct as an MP. The defendant having pleaded justification, the court now tried the liability issue.
Held: The claim failed. The publication had the benefit of reynolds privilege.
Warby J said: ‘Applying these principles to the evidence in the present case the key factors to my mind are these. The claimant was a serving MP, and a Committee chair. The articles related wholly and exclusively to his conduct in those public roles, and not in any way to his private or personal life. I do not consider that the nature of the information is such as to engage Article 8. Further, Mr Yeo is unsurprisingly a robust individual and, although I have no doubt he has suffered considerable stress and anxiety as a result of publication there was, on the evidence, no interference of any seriousness with his family or home life, or with his relationships within his community. In summary, this was a disclosure that related to his public roles, not his private life. The consequences for him of the attack on reputation that was involved were not of a nature or gravity such as to engage Article 8; his ‘personal integrity’ was not undermined. It follows that in my judgment the right approach in principle is the one indicated by the European Court in the Sunday Times case and by Lord Nicholls in Reynolds itself.’

Judges:

Warby J

Citations:

[2015] EWHC 3375 (QB), [2017] EMLR 1

Links:

Bailii

Jurisdiction:

England and Wales

Citing:

See AlsoYeo v Times Newspapers Ltd QBD 4-Feb-2015
The claimant MP sought damages alleging defamation by the defendant newspaper. The court heard a second case management conference as to amended particulars of claim. . .
See AlsoYeo v Times Newspapers Ltd QBD 22-Jul-2015
Pre-trial review of libel action. . .

Cited by:

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CitedNT 1 and NT 2 v Google Llc QBD 13-Apr-2018
Right to be Forgotten is not absolute
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CitedZXC v Bloomberg Lp CA 15-May-2020
Privacy Expecation during police investigations
Appeal from a judgment finding that the Defendant had breached the Claimant’s privacy rights. He made an award of damages for the infraction of those rights and granted an injunction restraining Bloomberg from publishing information which further . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.

Defamation, Human Rights

Updated: 23 November 2022; Ref: scu.555034