The High Court has today awarded the Claimant, a former receptionist at Ponds Forge International Sports Centre in Sheffield, £50,000 in damages (including aggravated damages) for libel, a permanent injunction, and an order under s.12 of the Defamation Act 2013.
The case concerned four videos published on two TikTok accounts by the Defendant, a member of Ponds Forge, in which he variously accused the Claimant of racially abusing, victimising and harassing him, and of being a racist. The videos featured footage of the Claimant filmed by the Defendant during an interaction at Ponds Forge in April 2023, wherein the Defendant was asked to attend reception after entering the leisure centre using another member’s wristband while his own account was frozen.
The Court held that the videos caused the Claimant to suffer serious reputational harm. The allegations were serious and the videos had each been published to thousands and (in respect of three videos) tens of thousands of TikTok users. Further, there was evidence of ‘actual’ reputational harm, as members of Ponds Forge had repeated the allegations and the Claimant stopped receiving invitations to his local Mosque.
The court rejected the Defendant’s truth defence. DHCJ Guy Vassall-Adams KC found that the allegation of racism was inherently implausible, that the Defendant “made up the racism allegation as an act of revenge for the perceived public humiliation of being called to reception and questioned about his frozen account”, and that the videos “served to further [the Defendant’s] ambition to be a social media influencer and his portrayal of himself as a consumer champion who calls out racism and discrimination, notwithstanding that in this case that portrayal was dishonest.”
Further, the Defendant had uploaded a similar video about one of the Claimant’s colleagues, which the court held “demonstrates that [the Defendant] is ready and willing to make up false allegations of racism against other people just because he disagrees with something they have said or done.”
The harassment allegation was also found to be untrue as both inherently implausible and lacking any evidential basis. The Defendant did not advance a positive defence to the allegation of victimisation and there was no evidence to support the same.
5RB’s Lily Walker-Parr acted for the Claimant, instructed by Hemingways.
The judgment can be found here.