Slashdot Mirror
British Woman's Twitter Comments Spark Expensive Libel Claims
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the BBC: "A woman who complained about an unpaid £146 invoice is facing a libel battle that could cost her more than £100,000. Lesley Kemp, 55, took to Twitter claiming that a company based in the Middle East had failed to pay her promptly for transcription work. Now the firm is suing Mrs Kemp, of Milton Keynes, for defamation, claiming up to £50,000 in damages and a further £70,000 in costs. The company, Resolution Productions, based in Qatar, has yet to comment."
She should have known better than to speak while British.
If what she said is true then she has nothing to worry about. However she'll have to be able to prove it's true.
people without money don't receive justice against the people buying laws.
While I personally don't like the existence of libel laws, this is not the case of misusing it to censor criticism or somebody getting into trouble for an innocent joke. If the company can prove that they payed her promptly then this is libel, otherwise it's not and she can sue them back for wrongful accusation. Nobody has a right not to get sued.
....who thinks slander is a strange thing to ban legally? As a skeptic it seems both epistemically and pragmatically difficult to work with such laws, and I feel we should try and create unlegislated social pressure to help the truth float to the surface instead.
If what she said is true then she has nothing to worry about. However she'll have to be able to prove it's true.
Civil claims are ruinously expensive no matter what(even best case, a jurisdiction with robust speech protections and an anti-SLAPP statute with teeth, she'd need somebody to take the case on contingency, and have a sufficiently flexible schedule that 'Oh, just getting embroiled in an ongoing court case' won't, say, get her fired). Also, you might be thinking of American libel law. Over on her Britannic Majesty's side of the pond, the state of libel law is notoriously ghastly.
But this case has not gone to court yet, and her solicitor is persuing it no-win no-fee, which implies he believes she's on the winning side.
It's a myth that truth isn's a defense against libel in the UK. If you prove that what you said is true, then you win the case.
The myth seems to come about because the burden of proof is on the person who made the comment to prove the truth of the statement, not the accuser of libel to disprove it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law
Here, banking records will easily prove her to be telling the truth or not. I suspect this is simply a company trying to bully her with a meritless law-suit.
No, this is class justice.
in Malibu that goes by the name of Mrs Streisand.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Truth is no defense against libel in the U.K.
An interesting attack on U.K. libel law might be for foreigners to sue various MPs for things they've said.
Wrong, on all points. Comprehensively.
I know that Slashdot is now primarily a place for the immature and ill-informed to run off at the mouth on topics of which they know little, but that was a particularly clueless contribution.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Shut the fuck up and stop posting shit on twitter.
Problem solved.
Absolutely true. It's also true that these are the implements of liberalism. In short, they are the implements of those in power.
More to the point: the world doesn't just seem to be run by lawyers, it largely is.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Libertarian capitalism is where the government exists to solve contractual complaints and crimes. Libel is a crime, and so it's libertarian to have the courts used to oppress people. Though the libertarians claim it's not the intention when someone does it, but ask them what the role of the government is when something like that is in the news, and someone might accidentally tell the truth. Modern libertarianism (at least in the US) is plutocracy.
Lefty shit protects the people and the free speech so that this crap doesn't happen.
Learn to love Alaska
My understanding is that it's common in the UK for the court to award legal costs to the winner of the civil case, even if it's the defendent. In this particular case, the defendant has legal advice already, but they're working under an arrangement where they will not charge if the case is lost... and I suspect that if the case is won, the money for her defence will end up coming out of the plaintiff's wallet.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Here's an idea: stop trying to make everything about the US. The world doesn't revolve around you: you don't have to interject about how proud you are of your "country".
The world doesn't revolve around you
For me it does, believe it or not.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Here's an idea: stop trying to make everything about the US. The world doesn't revolve around you: you don't have to interject about how proud you are of your "country".
He has a point, though. The UK libel / defamation laws are appalling. So much so that the US had to break some treaties in order to prevent US citizens from being abused by the UK courts for speech which is very much acceptable in the US.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Chiropractic care isn't bogus when used for what it was designed to do—correcting posture and forcing tight muscles to release so that they don't cause strain in further muscles, resulting in a chain reaction of back pain that leaves people in serious pain.
Define "subluxation", in an objective and measurable way.
When you make your living treating the scientific equivalent of Bad Spine Spirits(tm), you just might be a quack.