Carter-Ruck Secures Highest Damages Award of 2006

The court has awarded the highest damages in a libel case so far this year to a journalist falsely accused of being linked to the 7 July bombings in London.

The journalist, Muhamed Veliu, represented by Hanna Basha, received £175,000 after suing both the publisher and the editor of a Kosovan newspaper, Bota Sot.

The editor is liable to pay the full £175,000. The publisher relied on an offer of amends defence, but is still jointly liable for £120,000 of the £175,000 award. Previously, the highest ever award in an offer of amends case
had been £58,500 (recovered by another Carter-Ruck client, Colonel Jonathan Campbell-James).

Under the offer of amends regime a publisher will get the benefit of a reduction in the damages by throwing in the towel at an early stage, offering to apologise and to pay compensation and legal costs. However, in Mr Veliu’s case the court has made it clear that the offer of amends regime is by no means a ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card.

The level of the award reflected the fact that the Defendants had published a libel which Mr Justice Eady found to be “one of the gravest imaginable”, and which had a “real, lasting and severe” effect on Mr Veliu. In addition, although the courts are encouraged to discount the sum that would otherwise be awarded where the publisher has “laid down its arms” and made an offer of amends, the “delay and the dismissive attitude” with which the publisher treated the complaint caused the judge to apply the lowest discount yet for an offer of amends case. Mr Justice Eady summed it up concisely; “it would have been possible to achieve a substantially larger discount, even in relation to these grave allegations, if the defendants had acted promptly and generously”.

So what should a publisher do to act “promptly and generously”? In a nutshell, the publisher needs to take a pro-active approach. It needs to respond to the complaint as quickly as possible, make a sensible offer of damages and publish an agreed apology immediately. By contrast, the publisher of the Bota Sot was found to have ignored letters of complaint, then denied liability. It had then published an apology in what the Judge described as “selfserving terms” and served evidence which was “poppycock”.

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Winter 2006