UK Libel Suit Tossed Because Any Actual Harm Would Have Been Tiny
from the not-so-harmful dept
While there still are all sorts of problems with UK libel law, a recent ruling in the UK's High Court tossed out a lawsuit because the potential damages were way too small to merit a trial. Specifically, someone charged a blogger with defamation for a blog post, but most of the content in that blog post was actually based on an article on the plaintiff's own website. From that, the court found that any "additional" damage beyond what was already known from the plaintiff's own article was so minimal that it wouldn't even be worth the cost of a trial.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: defamation, harm, uk
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Wrong Plantiff
[ link to this | view in chronology ]