Out-Law News 1 min. read

The Times wins libel case but loses web site argument


The Times has claimed victory in a libel case in the English Court of Appeal which was brought against it by a Russian businessman. However, it was unsuccessful in arguing that its web site archive was protected by the same defence that applied to its print edition.

Grigori Loutchansky sued The Times over an article which appeared in its print and on-line editions in 1999, accusing him of involvement in money laundering and the smuggling of nuclear weapons.

The Times successfully argued that its print edition was protected by a defence of “qualified privilege,” that it was the duty of a free press to give the public information on matters of public interest, even if the matters later turned out to be false. The court agreed. It noted that this defence gives journalists and their editors a degree of protection against libel actions when they report on matters of public interest, provided they act responsibly.

However, the newspaper also argued that qualified privilege protected its on-line news archive. It said that it maintained on its web site a publicly available archive of past issues “as a service to the public at large.” The court disagreed.

The court reasoned that archive material is “stale news” and its publication could not rank in importance with the dissemination of contemporary material. According to The Times, the court said that “where it was known that archive material was or might be defamatory, the attachment of an appropriate notice warning against treating it as the truth would normally remove the sting from the material.” The failure to attach any qualifications to the on-line articles over the period of a year “could not possibly be described as responsible journalism.”

Coincidentally, the Court of Appeals gave its decision on the same day that the New York Supreme Court ruled in an unrelated case of internet libel which was brought by the Bank of Mexico against a Mexican publisher and writer over on-line material that accused the Bank’s president of involvement in drug trafficking. The Bank’s case was dismissed, the court finding that the publisher was protected by the media’s broad principles of freedom of speech.

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