Tesla Motors Loses Appeal Against BBC's Top Gear 385
TrueSatan writes "In a highly detailed decision, the UK Court of Appeal has rejected Tesla's appeal against an eartlier ruling by a lower court that, too, rejected Tesla's case. Reading through the decision it is clear that the judge saw Tesla's case as lacking sufficient detail and specific instances of proof to support each claim. The judge stated that that Tesla's chances of a successful appeal, should the case have gone to trial, were insufficiently high to justify holding a trial. He stated that Tesla's case had no real chance of success and in many notes picked appart Tesla's legal team's arguments. That said, he did not say that Top Gear were right or justified in portraying Tesla's vehicle in the way they did — merely that there wasn't a legal case for an appeal. One of the key flaws in Tesla's case, according to the judicial decision, was Tesla's inability to show that actual pecuniary harm, with detailed financial figures, had occurred."
Re:How do you prove harm to reputation? (Score:2, Interesting)
I think what Tesla did constitutes fraud and libel. Why can't companies be held to libel as easily as individuals?
Re:Lots of cheap publicity (Score:5, Interesting)
With some of the costs paid by the UK taxpayer and the BBC license fee payers *snip*
Top Gear is fully funded from its own revenue streams, such as live shows and sales to syndication - its a huge profit center to the BBC, and funds itself rather than needing funding from the BBC license fee.
My god. Try visting reality. (Score:2, Interesting)
Where, precisely is this "legislate their profits" coming from?
Someone makes shit up (faked, lies, whatever you want to call it) to pretend a car is less useful than it is.
And you think stopping lies is "legislating their profits2??? Sorry, unless Tesla are making you BUY their cars by having it mandated by law, they aren't doing that. They're trying to get redress for lies against them.
Is the problem that they don't burn petrol?
Re:Exaggerations (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, does it really matter that it didn't actually run out of power? Should the Top Gear production crew have driven the car around the track for another 30 minutes just to get it to die, so they could get the shot legitimately when the point was the same?
Re:Exaggerations (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes.
Re:My god. Try visting reality. (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you ever watched Top Gear.
This is not a show like Motor Week. Their testing is stupid, pointless and very funny.
Re:Lots of cheap publicity (Score:4, Interesting)
Like PBS?