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:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
See Also – Yeo 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 Also – Yeo v Times Newspapers Ltd QBD 22-Jul-2015
Pre-trial review of libel action. . .
Cited by:
Cited – Economou v De Freitas QBD 27-Jul-2016
Failed action for defamation on rape allegations
The claimant had been accused by the defendant’s daughter of rape. He was never charged but sought to prosecute her alleging intent to pervert the course of justice. She later killed herself. The defendant sought to have the inquest extended to . .
Cited – NT 1 and NT 2 v Google Llc QBD 13-Apr-2018
Right to be Forgotten is not absolute
The two claimants separately had criminal convictions from years before. They objected to the defendant indexing third party web pages which included personal data in the form of information about those convictions, which were now spent. The claims . .
Cited – ZXC 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