Cases

Musa King v Telegraph Group Ltd (QBD)

Held

(1) The defence of justification depended on establishing at least reasonable grounds to suspect the claimant of involvement in terrorist activity. This had to be assessed from an objective standpoint and the claimant could rely upon facts outside the defendant's knowledge at the time of publication. The relevant passages in the defence offended the repetition and conduct rules and were struck out. (2) The court should not be drawn into assessing the merits of a case beyond the test required for summary judgment. It was not appropriate to order security for costs and it was difficult to see how a judge at this stage of the proceedings could have any impact on the discretion of the trial judge on costs. There were matters requiring investigation and cross-examination in repsect of both defences and the claim could not be said to have no reasonable prospects of success.

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