Peter Cruddas v (1) Jonathan Calvert (2) Heidi Blake (3) Times Newspapers Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | The Honourable Mr Justice Tugendhat,Mr Justice Tugendhat |
| Judgment Date | 31 July 2013 |
| Neutral Citation | [2013] EWHC 2298 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: HQ12D03024 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 31 July 2013 |
[2013] EWHC 2298 (QB)
The Honourable Mr Justice Tugendhat
Case No: HQ12D03024
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Desmond Browne QC and Matthew Nicklin QC and Victoria Jolliffe ( instructed by Slater and Gordon) for the Claimant
Richard Rampton QC and Heather Rogers QC and Aidan Eardley ( instructed by Bates Wells and Braithwaite) for the Defendants
Hearing dates: 2 — 12 July 2013
Approved Judgment
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
This is the judgment on the second stage of the trial of a claim for libel and malicious falsehood. The first stage of the trial was a preliminary issue, to determine what the words complained of actually meant. This issue was determined by myself at first instance: Cruddas v Calvert [2013] EWHC 1427 (QB) (5 June 2013) ("the 5 June judgment"), but my judgment was varied in one respect by the Court of Appeal in their judgment [2013] EWCA Civ 748 (21 June 2013). At this second stage of the trial I have to determine all the remaining issues in the case.
The case is about the conduct of the Claimant ("Mr Cruddas") in his capacity as the Treasurer of the Conservative Party ("the Party"). It is part of the function of a Treasurer to raise funds for the Party. The evidence has covered wider issues of funding of political parties. But the case relates to what Mr Cruddas said as Treasurer of the Party on 15 March 2012 at a meeting ("the Meeting") with undercover journalists posing as international financiers who were considering making a donation to the Party ("the Journalists"). The Meeting was covertly recorded in both audio and video form, and there is an agreed transcript ("the Transcript").
The main dispute that I have to resolve in this judgment is whether the report of the meeting published in the issue of the Sunday Times dated 25 March 2012, and online, was an accurate and true report. Other defences to this claim for libel might in principle have been available to the Defendants, such as honest opinion (formerly fair comment), or the public interest in responsible journalism (the Reynolds defence). In a pre-action letter dated 13 July 2012 the Defendants said these defences would be available to them. But when the time came for them to serve a Defence the Defendants chose not to raise either of these defences. They have chosen to rely solely on the defence of truth. The case does, plainly, raise issues of public interest, but public interest is not necessary or relevant to a defence of truth. The truth is the truth, whether telling it is in the public interest or not. But telling a falsehood would not be in the public interest.
Mr Cruddas is a businessman. In March 2012 he was the Treasurer of the Conservative Party. The Third Defendant is the publisher of the Sunday Times. The 1 st and 2 nd Defendants are the Journalists and part of that paper's 'Insight' team. The Journalists put together a plan whereby they would pretend to be international financiers working for a company called Global Zenith who wanted to explore making donations to the Conservative Party. They hired a lobbyist called Sarah Southern ("Ms Southern") and, through her, arranged the Meeting with Mr Cruddas. Unknown to him, each journalist carried a concealed camera with an audio recording facility as well. I have viewed the audiovisual recording and the Transcript, both in court and in my room.
On 25 th March 2012 the Sunday Times published four articles. The first ("the First Article") began on the front page and continued on page 2 under the headline 'Tory treasurer charges £250,000 to meet PM.' The front page also had a photograph of Mr Cruddas. A sub-heading further reported that the day before 'Cameron's fundraiser [had been] forced to resign'. The second article ("the Second Article") was on pages 8 and 9 under the headline 'Cash for Cameron: cosy club buys the PM's ear'. The third article ("the Third Article"), also on page 9, had the headline, 'Pay the money this way and the party won't pry'. Page 9 carried a fourth article as well. This was written by Mark Adams under the headline 'Rotten to the Core'. These four articles, in substantially the same form, were also carried by the newspaper's website ("the Website"). The Sunday Times also published an editorial ("the Editorial") in the same issue on the theme 'Sack the Treasurer and Clean Up Lobbying'. I shall refer to the parts of the Articles which Mr Cruddas complains of as "the Articles" or "the words complained of". The reader of the Articles is referred to the Editorial by a direction printed at the end of the Second Article.
In addition, on page 2 there is printed an excerpt from Mr Cruddas's letter of resignation, and on page 9 a report of a speech given in 2010 by David Cameron on lobbying (see para 32 below) when he was Leader of the Opposition.
The claim form was issued on 24 th July 2012. Mr Cruddas complained of the whole of the First and Second Articles, together with most of the Third Article, both in the print edition and on the Website. He did not complain of the Fourth Article, the Editorial, or the other items on those pages. The original Particulars of Claim were served two days later on 26 th July 2012. The first three Articles were alleged to be defamatory of Mr Cruddas. The first three Articles were also said to be malicious falsehoods. Malice is an essential ingredient of malicious falsehood and it is Mr Cruddas's case that the Journalists each published those first three articles maliciously and that the 3 rd Defendant is vicariously responsible for their torts.
MEANING
For the purposes of a libel action the law assumes that all reasonable readers will understand the words complained of in the same way (this is the so-called single meaning rule). In its judgment, referred to above, the Court of Appeal has ruled that in their natural and ordinary meanings the Articles meant what Mr Cruddas had said they meant, namely:
"The first meaning: In return for cash donations to the Conservative Party, the claimant corruptly offered for sale the opportunity to influence government policy and gain unfair advantage through secret meetings with the Prime Minister and other senior ministers.
The second meaning: The claimant made the offer, even though he knew that the money offered for secret meetings was to come, in breach of the ban under UK electoral law, from Middle Eastern investors in a Liechtenstein fund; and
The third meaning: further, in order to circumvent and thereby evade the law, the claimant was happy that the foreign donors should use deceptive devices, such as creating an artificial UK company to donate the money or using UK employees as conduits, so that the true source of the donation would be concealed."
The point on which the Court of Appeal varied the determination that I had made was in respect of the first meaning, relating to what Mr Cruddas had been offering to the undercover Journalists who he believed to be, or to be representing, prospective donors. Mr Cruddas had submitted, and I had accepted, that the Defendants had alleged that Mr Cruddas was guilty of a criminal offence involving corruption (that is to say a crime other than one under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 s.61 ("PPERA, or the 2000 Act")). The Defendants submitted, and the Court of Appeal accepted, that the Defendants had not alleged such criminality, but, rather, no more than that what Mr Cruddas said in the course of a meeting on 15 th March was:
"inappropriate, unacceptable and wrong and gave rise to an impression of impropriety".
As far as the second and third meanings are concerned, the Court of Appeal explained the meanings which they and I had determined the words complained of to bear (as set out above) by saying (at para [23]) that "the allegation of being prepared to countenance a 'loophole in electoral law' does not amount to an imputation of criminality but … that the allegation of countenancing the funnelling of money through a third party is an imputation of countenancing a breach of section 61 of the 2000 Act [PPERA]."
For the purposes of an action for malicious falsehood the law assumes that reasonable readers may understand the words complained of differently from one another. For the purposes of this claim, the Court of Appeal and I determined that the imputation of criminal corruption (that is criminality other than a breach of s.61 of the PPERA) is a meaning which reasonable persons could read into the Articles. Both courts determined (para [33] of the judgment of the Court of Appeal) that the second and third meanings advanced by Mr Cruddas are meanings which a substantial number of reasonable readers would understand the words complained of to bear, and in particular that, the Articles alleged that Mr Cruddas was offering benefits in return for a donation in circumstances which would have been an actual breach of PPERA (not just a breach of the spirit of PPERA), in so far as he allegedly knew that the donation would be funds from a foreign owner channelled through the Journalists purporting to be the donors.
ELECTORAL LAW AND PARTY FUNDING
The PPERA s.61 provides:
"(1) A person commits an offence if he—
(a) knowingly enters into, or
(b) knowingly does any act in furtherance of,
any arrangement which facilitates or is likely to facilitate, whether by means of any concealment or disguise or otherwise, the making of donations to a registered party by any person or body other than a permissible...
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