James Wilson v James Mendelsohn
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Richard Parkes |
| Judgment Date | 10 April 2024 |
| Neutral Citation | [2024] EWHC 821 (KB) |
| Court | King's Bench Division |
| Docket Number | Case No: QB-2021-002673 |
[2024] EWHC 821 (KB)
HH Richard Parkes KC
(Sitting as a Judge of the High Court)
Case No: QB-2021-002673
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
KING'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Gervase de Wilde (Direct Access) for the Claimant
Liam Walker KC (Direct Access) for the First and Third Defendants for cross-examination of the claimant on 4 December; otherwise the First and Third defendants appeared in person.
Hearing dates: 4 – 7 December 2023
Approved Judgment
This judgment was handed down remotely at 10.30am on 12 April 2024 by circulation to the parties or their representatives by e-mail and by release to the National Archives.
Introductory
This claim involves, in the main, clever and principled people with very strong views on matters of politics. It particularly involves anti-Semitism, that cruel and ancient hatred, deplorably resurgent in our time, to which all involved in the case would say they are strenuously opposed, and the belief that criticisms of the state of Israel often reveal, or can be understood to be cover for, anti-Semitic attitudes; and it illustrates the profoundly toxic potential of the ill-considered and ill-tempered use of social media.
The claimant, James Wilson, is a legal academic and non-practising solicitor in his early 50s. He has been in a relationship with his partner, Sally Smith, for 24 years, and they have three children. She is a practising solicitor. He has in the past taught at the University of Huddersfield, and he now teaches law part-time at Sheffield Hallam University, while also working on a PhD at the School of Law of Sheffield University. He lives in a part of Huddersfield called Birkby with Ms Smith and their family. One of their children has a severe disability associated with a very premature birth, in consequence of which neither Mr Wilson nor Ms Smith is able to work full time. Mr Wilson and Ms Smith have lived in Birkby for over 20 years, their children have been educated there, and of course they know the area and its people very well.
It was Mr Wilson's unchallenged evidence that Birkby is an area of acute poverty and high social deprivation, with high levels of violence, largely associated with gangs of drug dealers. There are also periodic ‘paedophile’ scares which, as he said, create a high and irrational level of vigilance and threats of violence. Mr Wilson describes himself as being politically left wing, in the sense of supporting a social democratic settlement along the lines of the post-1945 welfare state, with public ownership and control of essential services. He says that he was a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn while Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party, and remains an active, although less enthusiastic, member of the Labour Party under the leadership of Keir Starmer. He rejects any allegation that he is an anti-Semite or that he has targeted campaigners against anti-Semitism.
Mr Wilson was represented by Mr de Wilde on a direct access basis.
James Mendelsohn, the first defendant, is a former solicitor who used to be on the teaching staff at the University of Huddersfield but is now a senior lecturer in law at the University of the West of England, in Bristol. He is what is known as a Messianic Jew, which, he explained, means that he accepts both the Old and the New Testaments. As well as teaching law, he researches and writes about anti-Semitism.
The second defendant was Dr Peter Newbon, who was a senior lecturer in the Humanities Department of the University of Northumbria. Dr Newbon taught literature, but evidently spent much of his time writing on social media about anti-Semitism. Mr Mendelsohn never met Dr Newbon, but had regular contact with him through Twitter and Facebook, and regarded him as a friend. Dr Newbon died an untimely death on 15 January 2022. The inquest into his death recorded a verdict of suicide. The defamation claim against him thereupon lapsed, and the other claims were quickly settled by his estate. The terms of the settlement, which were incorporated in a written agreement dated 15 March 2022, included a contribution to the claimant's costs and a provision for disclosure of documents.
The third defendant, Edward Cantor, is a musician and former restaurateur. In common with others in this case, he is (or was) a regular user of Twitter.
Mr Mendelsohn and Mr Cantor were represented by solicitors from April and May 2021 respectively, some months before the issue of the claim form on 6 July 2021. In May 2023, Mr Mark Lewis of Patron Law, who by that stage was acting for both men, ceased to act because of a conflict. In June 2023 they were both briefly represented by Chandler Harris LLP. On 12 June 2023 that firm wrote on their behalf an open letter to Mr Wilson offering undertakings designed to remove any need for him to pursue his claim for an injunction. It was said that the offer was made because the defendants had no desire to do any of the things that they undertook not to do. Shortly thereafter, they withdrew their instructions from Chandler Harris LLP, and have since acted in person.
In the event, the defendants were unrepresented at trial. However, they instructed Mr Liam Walker KC on a direct access basis to cross-examine Mr Wilson on the first day of trial. By agreement between Mr Mendelsohn and Mr Cantor, who had worked as a team in preparing for trial, Mr Mendelsohn conducted all the questioning of Mr Wilson's other witnesses and the re-examination of the defence witnesses. He was not, however, representing Mr Cantor.
History
Mr Wilson and Mr Mendelsohn were colleagues at the University of Huddersfield between November 2008 and May 2014.
Mr Mendelsohn shared an office at the University of Huddersfield with a friend and colleague, a Mr Mark Edwards, who did not get on with Mr Wilson. In 2011, Mr Edwards made wide-ranging complaints against Mr Wilson, which were investigated and in one respect upheld. I refer to the complaints and their investigation and resolution collectively as ‘the University Information’. They are said by Mr Wilson to be private and confidential and not to have been made public either within the university or elsewhere.
This episode was disinterred many years later by Mr Mendelsohn. On 10 July 2020 he informed Dr Newbon about it. Dr Newbon responded to what he had been told by referring to it publicly on Twitter. Mr Mendelsohn's communication of those matters to Dr Newbon, and Dr Newbon's subsequent airing of them on Twitter, form part of the claim in misuse of private information.
At the same time, Mr Mendelsohn also supplied Dr Newbon with some other information about Mr Wilson.
On the morning of 3 December 2018, there was an altercation between Mr Wilson and a woman called Rifeth Akhtar, outside the junior school in Birkby, to which both of them sent their children. The altercation resulted in Mrs Akhtar's decision to post a photograph of Mr Wilson, and accompanying commentary, on Facebook (‘the Facebook Post’). As later republished, that post forms the subject of Mr Wilson's claim in defamation and part of his claim in privacy and data protection.
Mrs Akhtar was persuaded or instructed by a police officer to delete the Facebook Post the next day (4 December 2018), but not before Mr Mendelsohn had taken a screenshot of it which reproduced the Facebook Post in its entirety (‘the Screenshot’). That is admitted.
Nineteen months later, on 10 July 2020, Mr Mendelsohn emailed the Screenshot to Dr Newbon. On 12 August 2020 Dr Newbon, in turn, decided to publish the Screenshot on Twitter, with an added commentary.
Mr Mendelsohn also gave Dr Newbon some information concerning the difficulties at Huddersfield between Mr Wilson and Mr Edwards. Mr Mendelsohn accepts having told Dr Newbon that Mr Wilson had bullied and harassed a friend of his, that the friend had brought a grievance against him, and that the grievance had been partially upheld. What is in dispute is how far, if at all, the information passed to Dr Newbon was private information.
It is not in dispute that Dr Newbon thereupon published on Twitter in a series of tweets both the Screenshot (with commentary) and at least part of the information about Huddersfield that Mr Mendelsohn had disclosed to him, between 12 and 13 August 2020.
It is also common ground that Mr Cantor picked up from Dr Newbon's tweets the Screenshot and re-published it, together with a brief caption, on Twitter from 15 August 2020 until about 19 April 2021.
There are claims in misuse of private information in respect of the information passed to Dr Newbon about Mr Edwards' complaints and in respect of the Screenshot, and there is a claim in defamation and data protection in relation to the Screenshot. Mr Mendelsohn is said to be liable for the re-publication of private information, and of the defamatory Screenshot, by Dr Newbon and Mr Cantor. In the defamation claim, there are issues as to serious harm, truth and honest opinion.
Preliminary Issues
It is established that the Facebook Post, which (in its Screenshot form) was published by Dr Newbon and by Mr Cantor, was defamatory of Mr Wilson at common law. That issue, together with the meaning of the Facebook Post and whether it consists of fact of opinion, was determined by Mr Richard Spearman KC sitting as a deputy Judge of the High Court on 30 March 2022.
The Facebook Post consisted of a photograph of Mr Wilson together with commentary by Mrs Akhtar.
I gratefully borrow the following description of the photograph from the Judge's judgment 1 on the trial of preliminary issues:
“[3] The photograph which accompanied these words was taken in daylight and shows a man (the Claimant) facing directly at the camera....
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