Rachel Riley v Laura Murray
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Nicklin |
| Judgment Date | 24 April 2020 |
| Neutral Citation | [2020] EWHC 977 (QB) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Docket Number | Case No: QB-2019-001964 |
| Date | 24 April 2020 |
[2020] EWHC 977 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS LIST
THE HONOURABLE Mr Justice Nicklin
Case No: QB-2019-001964
William Bennett QC and John Stables (instructed by Patron Law Limited) for the Claimant
Anthony Hudson QC and Mark Henderson (instructed by Howe & Co) for the Defendant
Written submissions: 7 April 2020
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.
THE HONOURABLE Mr Justice Nicklin
This is a libel action concerning the following Tweet, posted by the Defendant at 21.03 on 3 March 2019 (“the Tweet”):
“Today Jeremy Corbyn went to his local mosque for Visit My Mosque Day, and was attacked by a Brexiteer.
Rachel Riley tweets that Corbyn deserves to be violently attacked because he is a Nazi.
This woman is as dangerous as she is stupid. Nobody should engage with her. Ever.”
At the time of the Tweet, the Defendant was employed as the Stakeholder Manager in the office of Jeremy Corbyn, then the leader of the Labour Party. The Claimant complains that she has been defamed by the Tweet. In her Particulars of Claim, the Claimant contends that the natural and ordinary meaning of the Tweet (“the Claimant's Meaning”) was:
“The Claimant had publicly supported a violent attack upon Jeremy Corbyn at a mosque by saying that he deserved it. She has shown herself to be a dangerous person who incites unlawful violence and thuggery and is therefore so beyond the pale that people should boycott her and her tweets.”
In the alternative, the Claimant contended that this meaning was conveyed by innuendo. The Particulars of Innuendo relied upon were:
“The words complained of were published on Twitter. Users of Twitter use the word “engage” to mean to interact with another user, whether by reading their (sic) tweets, liking their tweets, retweeting their tweets and so on. Therefore all or a substantial number of the publishees would have understood the words complained of to bear [the Claimant's Meaning].”
The Claim was commenced on 31 May 2019. The Defendant has not yet filed a Defence. On 8 October 2019, Master Yoxall ordered that there should be a preliminary trial of the following issues (“the Preliminary Issues”):
i) the natural and ordinary meaning of the Tweet, and any innuendo meaning.
ii) whether the meaning(s) convey(s) a statement of fact or of opinion, or else in part a statement of fact and in part opinion; and
iii) whether the meaning(s) convey(s) a defamatory tendency at common law.
The Claimant's case is that, at the date of publication of the Tweet, the Defendant had 7,245 followers on Twitter. The Tweet was retweeted 1,544 times and liked by 4,738 people. The Claimant contends that the Tweet would also have been republished via email, WhatsApp and other forms of communication outside Twitter. It is unlikely that it will be possible to identify the full extent of publication or to identify every one of the publishees. Although not on the scale of a national newspaper publication, the Tweet was published generally, rather than to a limited and identifiable group.
When ordering the trial of the Preliminary Issues, Master Yoxall also gave further directions, including:
i) that the Defendant was to file and serve a document (“the Defendant's Case”) recording her case on the Preliminary Issues, including what defamatory meaning and/or opinion is contended for by the Defendant, and if opinion what the basis of that opinion is;
ii) disclosure of documents relevant to the matters in dispute;
iii) witness statements; and
iv) that time for service of the Defence was extended until 21 days after determination of the Preliminary Issues.
Although the Claimant complained of an innuendo meaning, the factual issue to which it gives rise is of a limited compass — whether publishees of the Tweet were aware of the special meaning attributed to “engage” – it appears that the directions for disclosure and witness statements were made because the Defendant wished to put before the Court factual matters beyond the Tweet itself.
The Defendant's Case was duly filed on 29 October 2019 and included the following:
i) The Defendant identified the following as matters of “context” in which the Tweet was published:
a) A violent attack by a Brexiteer on Jeremy Corbyn whilst he was visiting his local mosque for Visit My Mosque Day on 3 March 2019 (at approximately 15.52), and the publicity concerning that attack.
b) the following tweet posted by the Claimant at 18.16 on 3 March 2019 (“the Claimant's Tweet”) following, and in response to, the attack on Jeremy Corbyn, which retweeted a tweet posted by Owen Jones, two months earlier, on 10 January 2019:
c) responses to the Claimant's Tweet including the following tweet posted at 18.20:
d) responses to the Claimant's Tweet by other Twitter users, including the following reply by Owen Jones at 19.03:
e) the Defendant's reply to the Claimant's Tweet posted at 20.10:
ii) The Defendant denied that the Tweet bore the Claimant's meaning. She contended that the Tweet bore the following natural and ordinary meaning (“the Defendant's Meaning”):
“(a) Following an attack on Jeremy Corbyn by a Brexiteer, the Claimant had posted a tweet which meant that Jeremy Corbyn deserves to be violently attacked because he is a Nazi.
(b) It was dangerous and stupid of the Claimant to post such a tweet.
(c) As a result, the Defendant's followers should not reply or respond to the Claimant's tweets on such matters.”
iii) The Defendant denied the innuendo facts relied on by the Claimant: “ users of Twitter do not use the word ‘engage’ exclusively to mean ‘interact with another user, whether reading their tweets, linking (sic) their tweets, retweeting their tweets and so on’. The meaning of the word ‘engage’ depends on the context in which it is used.”
iv) The Tweet was a statement of opinion.
v) The Tweet, in its proper context, indicated the basis of the opinion including, (a) the politically motivated attack/assault on Jeremy Corbyn at a mosque; (b) the Claimant's Tweet; and (c) responses to the Claimant's Tweet.
vi) The Defendant denied that the meaning conveyed a defamatory tendency: “ It expressed the Defendant's opinion about the message that the Claimant had conveyed by the tweet she had posted in response to the attack on the Leader of the Opposition that day. The reader would appreciate that the Defendant's Tweet was simply an expression of the Defendant's opinion about the Claimant's Tweet, and they could form their own view of the Claimant's Tweet. If, which is denied, the Defendant's Tweet conveyed a statement of fact, it is denied that it conveyed a defamatory tendency.”
The Defendant has filed a witness statement dated 20 December 2019. The Claimant has filed no evidence. The Defendant's witness statement contains sections headed “ Background” – setting out her current and previous roles in the Labour Party; “ The Claimant's social media activity”; “ Owen Jones' tweet of 10 January 2019”; “ The attack on Jeremy Corbyn and the subsequent tweets” and “ Use of the word ‘engage’”.
It is unusual for the court to be asked to consider evidence when determining the natural and ordinary meaning of a publication and whether the hypothetical ordinary reasonable reader would have understood the words to be making an allegation of fact and/or expression of opinion. The reason it is unusual is that evidence is not admissible on the issue of what readers understood an allegedly defamatory publication to mean. The assessment of the single natural and ordinary meaning of words is wholly objective. Neither the meaning the publisher intended to convey, nor the meaning the publishees actually understood the publication to bear is relevant. From all the authorities that could be cited for these principles, it probably suffices to refer to Charleston v News Group Newspapers Ltd [1995] 2 AC 65, 70 and Slim v Daily Telegraph Ltd [1968] 2 QB 157, 171–172, 173, 174. What publishees actually understood a statement to mean can sometimes become relevant if a defendant seeks to establish that, notwithstanding publication of an objectively defamatory single meaning, the claimant's reputation was not actually harmed seriously (a point of potential relevance under s.1 Defamation Act 2013 and in any assessment of damages): Monir v Wood [2018] EWHC 3525 (QB) [196(iv) and (v)]. Such an exercise can only usually be expected to be fruitful in cases where the individual publishees can be identified. It might be thought that these are fundamental principles of defamation law that have been clearly established over many decades, across the Commonwealth. However, there is a creeping tendency, under the guise of alleged “context”, to attempt to adduce evidence extrinsic to the words complained of on the issue of the natural and ordinary meaning. The submissions made in this case are the latest, but it must be said one of the more ambitious, efforts to rely upon matters wholly beyond the publication complained of as “context”. For the reasons I explain below, the attempt fails.
With the consent of the parties, no hearing took place to hear the submissions of the parties. Instead, I have considered the written submissions of the parties on the issues to be determined. In accordance with the practice I outlined in Hewson v Times Newspapers Ltd [2019] EWHC 650 (QB) [25], copies of the parties' written...
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