In a judgment handed down on 8 November 2023, libel claims brought by Daniel Miller and Nina Power in respect of sixteen tweets and the content warning on an archive published by the artist Luke Turner have been dismissed. The counterclaim for harassment brought by Mr Turner was also dismissed.
Following a seven day trial in October 2023, Mrs Justice Collins Rice dismissed the libel claims, finding that Mr Miller and Ms Power had not shown that the specific imputations in the specific publications of which they complained had caused (or were likely to cause) serious harm to each of their reputations, as required by s.1 of the Defamation Act 2013.
As a result, the Judge did not go on to consider the defences relied on by Mr Turner of truth, honest opinion, publication on a matter of public interest and “reply to attack” qualified privilege.
The Court also dismissed Mr Turner’s counterclaim for harassment. While the Judge concluded that the Claimants had targeted Mr Turner with the “full lexicon of Twitter trolling”, that their conduct amounted to “bullying” and was “aggressive, in register, language and imagery”, the Judge concluded that it fell short of quasi-criminal conduct for the tort of harassment. In reaching this conclusion, the Judge held that “the whiff of threat and antisemitism which [Mr Miller and Ms Power] themselves can fairly be held to have created is too occasional, intangible, diffuse and unconsolidated to impart those distinctive and characteristic flavours to this course of conduct as a whole.”
A copy of the Judgment is available here and a full 5RB case note will be published in due course.
Jonathan Scherbel-Ball, led by Catrin Evans KC, was instructed by Mishcon de Reya for Mr Turner.