Adam Musa King Wins Substantial Damages And An Apology From the Sunday Telegraph

Carter-Ruck has secured a significant victory for Adam Musa King, a website designer and human rights activist, in his libel action against the publisher of the Sunday Telegraph.

The dispute centred on two articles which appeared in the Sunday Telegraph on 21 October and 9 December 2001, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

The articles suggested that there were strong grounds to suspect that Mr King was an accomplice of Osama bin Laden's network of terrorists and a supporter of Al Qaeda. They also suggested that Mr King was an advocate of violent Islamic extremism and a threat to the Jewish community in the United Kingdom.

Having pointed out to the Sunday Telegraph that the allegations were simply untrue, and in the absence of any attempt by the newspaper to make amends, Mr King was forced to commence proceedings in order to clear his name of the allegations, all of which he denied categorically.

A number of skirmishes then ensued, with the Sunday Telegraph doing all it could to try and scupper Mr King's case. The newspaper tried - and failed - to have the entire case struck out on the grounds that it had no real chance of success. It then tried, again unsuccessfully, to have the action stopped unless Mr King's legal team ceased to act on a no win, no fee basis.

Finally, only a matter of days before the trial was due to commence, the Sunday Telegraph threw in the towel. It acknowledged that the grossly defamatory allegations which it had published were, in fact, entirely false and that terrorism of any kind had always been abhorrent to Mr King. The newspaper apologised unreservedly to Mr King in court, agreed to publish a full apology and to pay him very substantial damages - as well as his legal costs.

The Musa King case is interesting on a number of levels. In particular, it prompted the Court of Appeal to make a number of observations on the application of the "no win, no fee" regime to libel proceedings.

Most importantly of all, however, Mr King's good name has been restored and the untruths published by the Sunday Telegraph have, rightly, been exposed, despite the newspaper's best efforts to stop the case proceeding to trial.

Had it not been for Carter-Ruck's CFA scheme, Mr King - an individual of limited financial means - would simply never have been able to bring his complaint to Court in the face of the enormous resources which the Telegraph Group was prepared to commit to fighting the case. Unsurprisingly, Mr King was delighted by the result and by the fact that these appalling allegations had been removed from his good name.

Get Carter-Ruck
Summer 2004