U.K. Libel Suit Hits U.S. Web Site

Ridge2001 writes: "CBS Marketwatch is running a story describing how a Canadian mining company has used British libel law to have material removed from a U.S. web site. Greg Palast, an American journalist who writes for Guardian Unlimited's Observer newspaper in the U.K., wrote an article which was defamatory, under British law, to Canadian mining company Barrick Gold. The Observer has deleted the article from its archives; Palast still has a copy at his U.S. web site but has been forced to snip the portions which were found defamatory. An uncensored version is still available here." Whatever you think of the content of the story, remember that this sort of chilling effect could make sites in any country afraid to report controversial news.

Big Surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't doubt that there is some ring of truth in his story but, the legal action against him can't be a surprise. The article is full of highly inflamatory accusations and inuendo. The article lacks proof though, there in lies the problem.

You can't accuse corporations run by powerful and *well* connected individuals of murder without proof. Without proof, it *is* slanderous and liable. The story may have been accurate but, without the proof, he may as well have been ranting on slashdot.

You are half right.

[www.sorehands.com]

Why do you have to have the proof in the article? Though it lends credibility to the article, it is not required to be there.

If the statements are true, then it is not libel under US law. And there is the problem. Under UK law, the standard for libel is different than US law, and different under the laws of each country. In the US, you have to prove statements are not true, and even if they are not, that it was not published with malice, recklessness, or negligence. I have the standards in my summary judgment motion brief [sorehands.com].

This is a Canadian company filing a complaint in a UK court, which raises the spector of why? Because it is harder to defend. Not only on the libel standard, but the other party would be harmed by going to defend it.

Re:You are half right.

[RGRistroph]

I think the reason why the suit was filed in UK court was that the main defendant was the Guardian, a UK newspaper. The fact that the writer was American and editted his site was just gravy. Perhaps he was worried about not being able to sell future work to the Gaurdian if he didn't help them out of their legal trouble.

So I don't think that Barrick went hunting for a country to sue Greg Palast in.

After all, they could have sued Amnesty International, the original source of the allegations in question, in British court.

But searches of the various Amnesty sites (amnesty-usa.org and amnesty.org) as well as google searches on "Amnesty International Barrick" can't seem to find the original accusation. Perhaps AI quietly withdrew it ? (The search cgi scripts on a couple of the Amnesty sites seem broken, so maybe I just can't find it.)

Those web searches turn up a lot of liberal sites of the letsriot and indymedia ilk. They all mess themselves over the alledged Amnesty connection, but none of them provide a link to a press report or other documentation.

Can someone find the original Amnesty accusation on the "extra judicial killings" ?

It is also noteworthy that aside from that one accusation, all the other stuff (including speculation on the death of the geologist who fell out of the heliocopter) had been published in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and The Economist.

Perhaps Greg Palast's re-editting of his work can be seen as good journalism, not censorship.

censorship v. re-editting

[www.sorehands.com]

I agree, it could be improved by re-editting. But there is a difference -- censorship is the re-editting with a gun pointed at your head.

Re:Big Surprise.

[Ridge2001]

The article lacks proof though, there in lies the problem.

The problem is not a lack of "proof". The problem is that the British legal system favors plaintiffs in libel suits. Under the American system, the onus is not on the defendant to prove that a statement is true; the onus is on the plaintiff to prove that the statement is false. Since the government is refusing to investigate the incident in Tanzania [guerrillanews.com], it would be very difficult for Barrick to prove libel.

Even if Palast and the Observer had "proof", truth is not an absolute defence under British law. This is why holocaust deniers are able to sue for libel when people call them "holocaust deniers" [google.com]. (The holocaust-denying plaintiff lost the lawsuit, but only because the judge ruled his "reputation had not been damaged"; not because of the truth of the defendant's statements.)

You can't accuse corporations run by powerful and *well* connected individuals of murder without proof.

During the Clinton presidency, did people refrain from accusing Clinton of complicity in the death of Vincent Foster [thenewamerican.com], for fear of libel lawsuits? No, because in the US, courts tend to heavily favor the defendant in libel suits, and hence these suits are rarely successful. This is why a plaintiff will attempt to move a libel lawsuit to another country on the slightest pretext.

Re:Big Surprise.

[nhw]

Even if Palast and the Observer had "proof", truth is not an absolute defence under British law. This is why holocaust deniers are able to sue for libel when people call them "holocaust deniers". (The holocaust-denying plaintiff lost the lawsuit, but only because the judge ruled his "reputation had not been damaged"; not because of the truth of the defendant's statements.)

Justification - the defence to an action in the tort of defamation that the allegedly defamatory material is true - is an absolute defence.

I don't know where you got your information about the Irving case, but if you actually read the article to which you link, the ratio decidendi does not depend on the lack of damage to the plaintiff: the judge is quite clear that the truth of the accusation is the important fact.

Re:Big Surprise.

[Wesley Everest]

After considering the case for almost four weeks, Judge Charles Gray ruled against Mr Irving, saying he had failed to prove his reputation had been damaged.

[...]

Under British law, Prof Lipstadt and her co-defendant were not able to rely solely on truth as a defence.

I don't know about the case in question or if the article correctly represents British law, but the article clearly says that proving truth is not enough, even if it is important. And the article also clearly suggests that the lack of damage was the deciding factor.

The article implies that if the defendant's claims were true and the plaintiff had suffered a damaged reputation as a result of truthful accusations, that it would be libel, and the plaintiff would win.

Re:Big Surprise.

[townmouse]

Read the whole article, not just the opening paragraphs.

The judge said he found that Irving was "an active Holocaust denier; that he was anti-Semitic and racist and that he associated with right-wing extremists who promoted neo-Nazism".

There were certain defamatory imputations which he had found to be defamatory of Mr Irving, but in his judgment the charges against Mr Irving which had been proved to be true were of "sufficient gravity" for it to be clear that the failure to prove the truth of other matters did not have any material effect on the historian's reputation.

In other words, since Irving was shown to be a holocaust denier, the few unproven minor allegations did not damage his reputation any further.

Not under U.S. libel laws

[Wesley Everest]

In the U.K., the person being sued for libel is guilty until proven innocent. If they can't prove that everything they said is true, they lose.

In the U.S., you are innocent until proven guilty. The corporation has to prove:

1. That what you wrote was not true.
2. That you knew it wasn't true.
3. That you wrote it intending to cause them damage.
4. and that they actually suffered monetary damage.

So, as far as U.S. (and many other countries) laws go, you are wrong -- not having proof does not make it libel.

The real issue, though, is that an American citizen is being sued for libel in the U.K. for an article that is on an American website. Should corporations be allowed to shop around for the most pro-corporate court?

If my neighbor steals my newspaper, should I be allowed to press charges in Saudi Arabia and have their hand chopped off?

Whoa...

[InfinityWpi]

A Canadian company brings suit against an American website under British law?

Am I the only one who thinks something is seriously out of whack here? Is this even legally possible?

If so, I want to start bringing suit against people under Afganistan laws....

Well, you could read the article

[A nonymous Coward]

Suit was brought against the parent UK paper in the UK, and if the American reporter who was an agent for the UK paper had not "voluntarily" taken the article off his personal web site, the settlement owuld have cost the UK paper more.

The article is still available online elsewhere.

Next time, read the article, chump.

This story has been on Salon, too...

[Raetsel]

The bastion of liberalism has the story as well, titled "Exporting Corporate Control [salon.com]", and not only is it about censorship, they manage to bash President Bush, too! (Gee, that was hard, Mr. "I'm going to take a month-long vacation"...) Take the subtitle, for example:

• "A gold company with ties to the Bush family tries to muzzle a muckraking journalist."

Ah, a story about mass murder, gold, the-president-who-sorta-isn't, family, campaign finance, etc... Wonder what else they could have fit in there? Exactly how many degrees of seperation apply? Gawd, they just love being inflamatory... it does get them readers, I suppose. (I'm one, obviously.)

Anyway, political leanings aside, they do a good job of following the money. They also point out that Gregory Palast has written for Salon before, so they have a vested interest in his popularity...

What a wicked web, indeed.

Re:This story has been on Salon, too...

[RGRistroph]

Salon is definitely the Fox News of the left, except that they are more left than Fox News is right. I avoid them not for their biases, but because their web site was so abysmally designed and slow to read. I've heard they cleaned it up, I might check them out again.

While this Salon article says that Greg Palast found additional information to support the claim of the killings in Tanzania, Palast didn't put that information in the column in question. He also mentioned Amnesty's accusation without mentioning that they had backed down a bit (said that they couldn't confirm it, of course their investigation was also hampered).

I don't like the idea of some bewigged Brit judge dictating what can be on American web sites, or British web sites for that matter, but if you are going to pick a poster child or test case you could at least pick one where the journalism was above reproach, and known to be factually correct.

Problems in Internet Law

[3141]

This raises the question, if it is possible to prosecute somebody in another country under a particular country's law, what is to stop someone from seeking out a country which has harsh laws against some seemingly innocuous action and bringing others to trial through it? Something tells me that if someone brought a case against a NATO country using Iraqi law, say, they would simply be ignored.

not quite

[regexp]

I agree that this is scary, but to say simply that UK libel laws are being applied to a US Web site exaggerates the case.

The Guardian is a UK paper, and it was sued under UK law. Palast was working on their dime. The story doesn't provide much detail on how the company forced Palast to remove the work from his personal U.S. site, but it suggests that he removed it to protect the Guardian from further legal trouble in UK courts.

So this case, while disturbing, isn't quite what Slashdot frames it to be. There are no British bobbies knocking on Palast's door in the U.S., no FBI agents running around enforcing British law.

But what about this?

[Kibo]

If, in America, a freelance writer still owns the copyright for a digital representation of his work how can another party be held responsable for the writers actions reguarding a work the party doesn't own? Would it matter where the original writing of the work took place, or the local of the original agreement to produce the work? If it turned out that the writer in question owed the digital copyright to the work, wouldn't the lawyers for the paper simply state that fact to the British court?