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''Esther Louise Rantzen v Mirror Group Newspapers (1986) Ltd., Brian Radford, Richard Stott and Mirror Group Newspapers plc.''
993
Year 993 ( CMXCIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
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By place
Europe
* Spring – The 12-year-old King Otto III gives the Sword of Saints Cosmas and Damian ...
EWCA Civ 16,
993
Year 993 ( CMXCIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Europe
* Spring – The 12-year-old King Otto III gives the Sword of Saints Cosmas and Damian ...
4 All ER 975, also shortened to ''Rantzen v Mirror Group Newspapers'' by legal analysts, is a 1993 English
defamation
Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...
court case. The case was brought by the television presenter
Esther Rantzen
Dame Esther Louise Rantzen (born 22 June 1940) is an English journalist and television presenter, who presented the BBC television series ''That's Life!'' for 21 years, from 1973 until 1994. She works with various charitable causes, and foun ...
against
Mirror Group Newspapers, publisher of ''
The People
The ''Sunday People'' is a British tabloid Sunday newspaper. It was founded as ''The People'' on 16 October 1881.
At one point owned by Odhams Press, The ''People'' was acquired along with Odhams by the Mirror Group in 1961, along with the ' ...
'' which had alleged that Rantzen had protected a child abuser after he had given information about child abuse in a school.
The jury in the case at the
found for Rantzen and awarded her £250,000 in damages. The defendants appealed the award to the
Court of Appeal of England and Wales
The Court of Appeal (formally "His Majesty's Court of Appeal in England", commonly cited as "CA", "EWCA" or "CoA") is the highest court within the Courts of England and Wales#Senior Courts of England and Wales, Senior Courts of England and Wal ...
where the award was reduced to £110,000 as the court ruled that the damages awarded by the jury had been disproportionate.
Background
Rantzen had helped to set up
ChildLine with the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
and ran it as the chairwoman. On 3 February 1991, ''The People'' newspaper published four articles alleging that Rantzen had used her position as chair of ChildLine to protect a teacher accused of child abuse as he had helped her earlier. The teacher in question had told Rantzen about abuse at Crookham Court school and resigned from teaching there as a result, which prompted Rantzen to take her ''
That's Life!
''That's Life!'' was a satirical TV consumer affairs programme on the BBC, at its height regularly reaching audiences of fifteen to twenty million, and receiving 10–15,000 letters a week.
The series broadcast on BBC1 for twenty-one years, ...
'' TV programme to the school to investigate, during which they had found evidence of abuse. Child pornography was found at the school after which was later attributed to having been created by the teacher, who had taken a new teaching job in
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
. The newspaper articles alleged that Rantzen had covered up the teacher's past and failed to inform the new school of this fact. The articles also claimed that Rantzen had lied to the newspaper by asking them not to publish them on the grounds that if the articles were published, then it would hamper the police investigation.
High Court trial
Rantzen sued Mirror Group Newspapers for
libel
Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...
ling her. She claimed that they had made implications that she had covered up child abuse allegations as a reward to the teacher for helping her and abandoned her own morality, had taken no action despite her position in ChildLine, made insincere and hypocritical statements and had lied to protect herself and the teacher. Mirror Group Newspapers put in a plea of
justification and argued with a defence of
fair comment
Fair comment is a legal term for a common law defense in defamation cases (libel or slander). It is referred to as honest comment in some countries.
United States
In the United States, the traditional privilege of "fair comment" is seen as a prot ...
.
They argued against the plaintiff's claim that the article had implied that a cover up was a reward for assistance; the Judge allowed for this interpretation to be left up to the jury as well as directing them to consider the value of any award. The jury found that the articles were defamatory and awarded Rantzen £250,000 in damages.
Appeal
Mirror Group Newspapers appealed to the Court of Appeal on the grounds that the judge had misdirected the jury by allowing them to consider the value of the award and downplaying mitigating factors in justification and requested a new trial. The Court dismissed this, as they felt that the judge had not misdirected the jury as he had been reasonable when balancing the decision.
The defendants also argued that the award by the jury was excessive in relation to the damage that the articles had caused. As a result, they requested a new trial under the
Courts and Legal Services Act 1990
The Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 (c. 41) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed the legal profession and courts of England and Wales. The Act was the culmination of a series of reports and reforms that started with ...
. The Court considered this as the Act allowed for the Court either to order a new trial or to substitute the award for a figure that they deem appropriate.
This power was introduced by the
Lord Chancellor
The lord chancellor, formally the lord high chancellor of Great Britain, is the highest-ranking traditional minister among the Great Officers of State in Scotland and England in the United Kingdom, nominally outranking the prime minister. The ...
during the drafting of the bill so that disproportionately large awards by juries,
once called "Mickey Mouse money" by members of the judiciary as juries tended to award amounts for libel that were larger than those for personal injury claims, could be substituted by the courts.
The Court considered this alongside the applicability of
Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights
Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides the right to Freedom of Expression and Information. A fundamental aspect of this right is the freedom to hold opinions and receive and impart information and ideas, even if the receive ...
. They ruled that the Act which allowed for a new trial to be ordered if the award was disproportionate allowed for them to substitute the award in lieu of ordering a new trial and stated that juries should be instructed to consider purchasing power and proportionality of any award.
As a result, the Court of Appeal quashed the £250,000 award and substituted it with an award of £110,000 and Rantzen was granted leave to appeal to the
House of Lords
The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...
.
References
{{portalbar, England, Journalism, Law
Court of Appeal (England and Wales) cases
English defamation case law
1993 in British law
Juries in the United Kingdom
Reach plc
1993 in case law