Legal Questions and Answers by
Jonathan Stones of John Barkers
Question :-
I wished to write and express my anger about the court case in which a retired teacher won libel damages of £1,250 for jokey remarks made about him on an internet website.
Surely one of the great beauties of the Internet is that it enables people all over the world to communicate freely without the normal constraints.
Do we now have to have every e-mail we send checked by a lawyer?
Answer :-
You are completely wrong if you think that the Internet is not subject to the normal law of the land. It is subject to the law - and that includes defamation.
Publishing untrue and damaging comments about someone on the Internet is no different to making such remarks in a newspaper or on a town center billboard. Indeed, given that the particular website claims something of the order of eight million hits a day, it could be argued that the publication was exceptionally damaging.
The case underlines what lawyers have been saying for some time: That Internet users need
to be more cautious. This was the first Internet defamation case involving individuals. Unless net users wise-up, it is unlikely to be the last and, in defamation case terms, the award in this instance was peanuts . . . libel damages can be really huge.
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