Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Riley v Sivier (EWHC, England and Wales): Serious harm upheld; public interest defence under Defamation Act 2013 s 4 fails as belief manifestly unreasonable; £50,000 aggravated damages and injunction

Published on: 06 December 2022

Published by a LexisNexis TMT expert

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Article summary

Riley v Sivier [2022] EWHC 2891 (KB) What are the practical implications of this case?

Two notable themes arise from this careful judgment on serious harm to reputation, the public interest defence in DA 2013, s 4, and the assessment of damages.

First, the court considers how evidence of poor reputation bears on serious harm. Steyn J held that ‘fresh’ allegations may still inflict serious harm even when readers already regard the claimant unfavourably. Here, the piece appeared on a site that strongly backed Jeremy Corbyn. Steyn J accepted this likely meant a sizeable share of readers were politically hostile to the claimant, who had been forthright in criticising antisemitism within the Labour Party (para [114]). Nonetheless, the new assertion that the claimant endorsed online abuse of a teenage girl would have lowered readers’ opinions of her, irrespective of pre-existing disagreements with her political stance.
Second, the judgment explores in detail the ‘reasonableness’ limb of the public interest defence. The defendant drafted the article quickly—within roughly an hour or two immediately before publication (para [151]). Crucially, this did not of itself rule out a...

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