Cases

Fiddes v Channel Four Television Corporation & Ors (No 2) (CA)

Held

Dismissing the appeal:

(1) Tugendhat J had the benefit of having case managed the case for nearly a year and was due to be the trial judge. He had close familiarity with the case and wide experience in the defamation field. In such circumstances, the court would be slow to interfere with his assessment of the first two questions.

As to the second question, the inconvenience to be considered was that arising from the prolonged examination of documents, not any other form of inconvenience. Further, care should be taken not to give too much independent weight to the increase in time and costs which a jury would involve. Trial by jury will almost always cost more and take longer than the same trial before judge alone, so giving weight to that factor would risk undermining the constitutional importance of the right to trial by jury.

(2) At the discretion stage the Judge was perfectly entitled to give weight to factors such as the possible chilling effect of costs and the desirability of a reasoned judgment. His decision was not plainly wrong.

Also