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Blogger Wins Libel Damages Over Columnist's Tweets (bbc.co.uk)

eionmac shares a report that details a legal battle in which a food blogger won thousands of dollars in libel damages "after a row over two tweets." BBC reports: Food blogger Jack Monroe has won 24,000 British pounds damages, plus legal costs, in a libel action against columnist Katie Hopkins after a row over two tweets. Ms Monroe sued the writer over two war memorial tweets she said caused "serious harm" to her reputation. Ms Hopkins posted tweets in May 2015 asking her if she had "scrawled on any memorials recently." Ms Monroe said that meant she had either vandalized a war memorial or "condoned or approved" of it. Mr Justice Warby also ordered Ms Hopkins -- a columnist for the Mail Online -- to pay an initial 107,000 British pounds towards the campaigner's legal costs within 28 days. He ruled that the tweets had caused "Ms Monroe real and substantial distress" and she was entitled to "fair and reasonable compensation."

2 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Glad I Live in America by jaa101 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    By the way, since you apparently burned all your dictionaries during Brexit, libel is stating something damaging as factual about a person in writing. It was clear that that tweet was an insult and not real libel: i.e. "I saw/heard so and so deface(d) a war memorial."

    The dictionary is the wrong book. Judges are going to go by the legal statutes which define what libel is. They only need to fall back on dictionaries if the statutes don't themselves define a term and I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the laws of England spend pages and pages defining what libel is. I wouldn't blame the judge in this case either; the politicians wrote the laws.

  2. Re:For those who don't know... by janfany · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Don't see why she can't take you to court, receive 24,000 quid and stick you with a 107,000 quid bill for that comment. It seems at least as bad as the one she made and in your case it's deliberate. But then we know the law is an ass.