Internet is among many other things a global and instantaneous platform of opinions. Not only social networks and market places, but also countless private and organizational websites and blogs maintain forum sections where opinion-mongers are up in arms and deliver heated verbal battles at their hearts’ content. Sometimes judges have to deal with individuals who bring their battles before the court. Here is one of such cases (a full text of judgement):
Chris McGrath (claimant) offered his book “The Attempted Murder of God: Hidden Science You Really Need To Know” on Amazon (3rd defendant) and wrote under several alias, purporting to be an independent reader, reviews and comments on Stephen Hawking's book “The Grand Design: New Answers to the Ultimate Questions of Life” also offered on Amazon, essentially for the purpose of promoting his own book, for example by referring to his book as an “answer to all doubts raised in [Hawking’s] book" and an “antidote to this misguided book.” This backdoor method and aggressive propaganda triggered many reader criticisms, most intensely by Vaughan John Jones (4th defendant). McGrath threatened Jones with a lawsuit and had his postings taken down from the Amazon threads, which led Jones to open a new thread on the website of Prof. Richard Dawkins (1st defendant) and his foundation (2nd defendant) to continue his anti-McGrath campaign. The threads reveal that the main reason for Jones’ intervention and McGrath’s rage was the former’s efforts to disclose the latter’s identity: a typical frontal collision of two stereotype personalities, i.e. a justice-hammered “I’ll get you” type versus a threat-brandishing “Get out of my way” type, which rapidly escalated into a sworn-enemy obsession by one of them.
Verbal abuse on the Internet, for its global and instantaneous snow-ball effect, can put the offender promptly behind bars in extreme cases, as it befell a young Twitter user who was sentenced to 56 days imprisonment for his “vile and abhorrent” mocking of the footballer Fabrice Muamba after he collapsed at a game with a heart attack (BBC Report). Anyway, McGrath, not having that kind of high-calibre abuse on his side, sued the two websites as main defendants seeking ‘aggravated’ and ‘exemplary’ damages. Applying the Defamation Act 1996 s. 1 “Responsibility for Publication” and reg. 19 and 22 of the Electronic Commerce Regulations 2002, HHJ Moloney argued in some 40 paragraphs to clarify the statutory defence for Amazon and Dawkins.
Then HHJ Moloney scrutinized five different threads on Amazon and Dawkins. Jones’ comments, as nicely summarized by the judge at 59, centred on the 'misconduct in business' and 'personal dishonesty' [my impression: the cat is out of the bag]. To decide whether McGrath’s defamation claim is justified, the judge went through the allegedly offending comments one by one and in the end picked out all potentially defamatory expressions such as nutter, let him hang himself, wingnut drivel, disreputable idiot, chancer, superstitious, drooling morons, lunatic fringe of religious people, repugnant as fleas, clear mental instability, lying fundamentalist creationists lacking moral and ethical integrity, and so forth. The judge then wisely made a u-turn and identified some facts as being matters “clear beyond argument”: McGrath sought to promote sales of his own book by means of false reviews, pretending to be independent readers, and take advantage of Hawking’s reputation to promote his own book “under the false guise of a review of that book,” and he used the Amazon debates under false identities purporting to be other readers giving their frank opinions.The judge also highlighted some facts which in fact corresponded to Jones’ assertions, thus removing the accused words of their defamatory charges and turning them into fair comments and honest opinions. Importantly, the judge made a distinction between hostile and vitiating comments.
In light of the above findings and by comparison with the substantial costs of trial for other parties, the judge struck out McGrath’s claim for damages as he struck out all other claims for reasons of, among others, absence of any credible claims. To reach this (for us common-sense citizens very self-evident) conclusion, the judge responded, in his 99 (partly quite lengthy) paragraphs of judgement, to each item of claim and the slightest opposition of the claimant by dissecting every significant word (for example, he used over 400 words to interpret the word ‘innuendo’ used by McGrath in his claim) and all circumstantial facts and by weighing all balancing factors in light of accepted definitions, relevant process principles, legal provisions and doctrines, and case law. I could not help feeling the judge’s painstaking efforts to keep a strict objectivity leaving nothing unaddressed, very often giving this reader the impression of unnecessary hair-splitting.
The judgement was handed down on 30th March, i.e. three months before the enactment of the Defamation Bill designed to amend the Defamation Act. The added or changed provisions, above all the requirement for serious harm, defences of truth and honest opinion, and increased protection to website operators regarding the user-generated content, would have saved the good judge many headaches and pages. I strongly doubt that the claimant of this case may be helped by the new Defamation Bill as the defendant in an imaginary case with Stephen Hawking as the claimant. No mitigating interpretation of the word ‘defamation’ would be able to avert the defamatory charges of some words McGrath used with reference to Hawking’ book. Even the ever-objective judge commented in parenthesis at one point: “This is of course a serious attack on the intellectual honesty of Prof. Hawking” to one of McGrath’s comments including: “Hawking’s book is nonsense” and “he knows God exists”.
Chris McGrath (claimant) offered his book “The Attempted Murder of God: Hidden Science You Really Need To Know” on Amazon (3rd defendant) and wrote under several alias, purporting to be an independent reader, reviews and comments on Stephen Hawking's book “The Grand Design: New Answers to the Ultimate Questions of Life” also offered on Amazon, essentially for the purpose of promoting his own book, for example by referring to his book as an “answer to all doubts raised in [Hawking’s] book" and an “antidote to this misguided book.” This backdoor method and aggressive propaganda triggered many reader criticisms, most intensely by Vaughan John Jones (4th defendant). McGrath threatened Jones with a lawsuit and had his postings taken down from the Amazon threads, which led Jones to open a new thread on the website of Prof. Richard Dawkins (1st defendant) and his foundation (2nd defendant) to continue his anti-McGrath campaign. The threads reveal that the main reason for Jones’ intervention and McGrath’s rage was the former’s efforts to disclose the latter’s identity: a typical frontal collision of two stereotype personalities, i.e. a justice-hammered “I’ll get you” type versus a threat-brandishing “Get out of my way” type, which rapidly escalated into a sworn-enemy obsession by one of them.
Verbal abuse on the Internet, for its global and instantaneous snow-ball effect, can put the offender promptly behind bars in extreme cases, as it befell a young Twitter user who was sentenced to 56 days imprisonment for his “vile and abhorrent” mocking of the footballer Fabrice Muamba after he collapsed at a game with a heart attack (BBC Report). Anyway, McGrath, not having that kind of high-calibre abuse on his side, sued the two websites as main defendants seeking ‘aggravated’ and ‘exemplary’ damages. Applying the Defamation Act 1996 s. 1 “Responsibility for Publication” and reg. 19 and 22 of the Electronic Commerce Regulations 2002, HHJ Moloney argued in some 40 paragraphs to clarify the statutory defence for Amazon and Dawkins.
Then HHJ Moloney scrutinized five different threads on Amazon and Dawkins. Jones’ comments, as nicely summarized by the judge at 59, centred on the 'misconduct in business' and 'personal dishonesty' [my impression: the cat is out of the bag]. To decide whether McGrath’s defamation claim is justified, the judge went through the allegedly offending comments one by one and in the end picked out all potentially defamatory expressions such as nutter, let him hang himself, wingnut drivel, disreputable idiot, chancer, superstitious, drooling morons, lunatic fringe of religious people, repugnant as fleas, clear mental instability, lying fundamentalist creationists lacking moral and ethical integrity, and so forth. The judge then wisely made a u-turn and identified some facts as being matters “clear beyond argument”: McGrath sought to promote sales of his own book by means of false reviews, pretending to be independent readers, and take advantage of Hawking’s reputation to promote his own book “under the false guise of a review of that book,” and he used the Amazon debates under false identities purporting to be other readers giving their frank opinions.The judge also highlighted some facts which in fact corresponded to Jones’ assertions, thus removing the accused words of their defamatory charges and turning them into fair comments and honest opinions. Importantly, the judge made a distinction between hostile and vitiating comments.
In light of the above findings and by comparison with the substantial costs of trial for other parties, the judge struck out McGrath’s claim for damages as he struck out all other claims for reasons of, among others, absence of any credible claims. To reach this (for us common-sense citizens very self-evident) conclusion, the judge responded, in his 99 (partly quite lengthy) paragraphs of judgement, to each item of claim and the slightest opposition of the claimant by dissecting every significant word (for example, he used over 400 words to interpret the word ‘innuendo’ used by McGrath in his claim) and all circumstantial facts and by weighing all balancing factors in light of accepted definitions, relevant process principles, legal provisions and doctrines, and case law. I could not help feeling the judge’s painstaking efforts to keep a strict objectivity leaving nothing unaddressed, very often giving this reader the impression of unnecessary hair-splitting.
The judgement was handed down on 30th March, i.e. three months before the enactment of the Defamation Bill designed to amend the Defamation Act. The added or changed provisions, above all the requirement for serious harm, defences of truth and honest opinion, and increased protection to website operators regarding the user-generated content, would have saved the good judge many headaches and pages. I strongly doubt that the claimant of this case may be helped by the new Defamation Bill as the defendant in an imaginary case with Stephen Hawking as the claimant. No mitigating interpretation of the word ‘defamation’ would be able to avert the defamatory charges of some words McGrath used with reference to Hawking’ book. Even the ever-objective judge commented in parenthesis at one point: “This is of course a serious attack on the intellectual honesty of Prof. Hawking” to one of McGrath’s comments including: “Hawking’s book is nonsense” and “he knows God exists”.
