Thoroughly entertaining and informative - a hoot to read
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Subtitled Winners and Losers in the Libel Business and written by a British lawyer about English law , at first blush one would think this text would be about as exciting as watching the proverbial paint dry, or a wet weekend locked away on holiday with your wife and her mother, or worse still, your husband and HIS mother. But you'd be wrong. Dead wrong. A more entertaining, witty, revelatory and balanced overview of name calling is hard to imagine. Of course it is much more than this, but greed, power, envy, malice are some of the forces that drive the business and some of the David and Goliath tales that feature in this text make great reading not to mention the schadenfreude the reader fees at the fall of the vainglorious and powerful.
If you are interested in freedom of speech, understanding the power Rupert Murdoch wields through such tabloid organs as he possesses in New York and elsewhere, on the other hand the importance of the Fourth Estate in bringing to heel those who abuse power, or if you are interested in Vanity Fair, National Enquirer, Private Eye or True Confessions or celebrities, the right to privacy, the public good, the administration of the law, then you will find this a worthwhile, and entertaining, text. On my part, I am no lawyer, but am as interested in a good drama as much as the next man. And in libel law, there is plenty of that. Some comedy. Some farce. Perhaps even some tragedy.
Mr Hooper begins by relating the history of the law which is rooted in the 1275 statute Scandalum Magnatum and explains how the law works. My understanding is that it acted wholly in favour of the Lord of the manor who could take action against those who spoke ill of him. Thus it wholly favoured the powerful. He ends by discussing later reforms especially the Civil Procedure Act of 1997 in which the parties" should be on as equal footing as possible, that expense is where possible saved and that cases are dealt with in a way that is proportionate to the amount of money involved, the importance of the case, the complexity of the issues and the financial position of each party." p 450 In line with this direction towards simplicity, judges will increasingly take control of libel actions to ensure they are swiftly and less expensively brought to court, or are settled, or otherwise disposed of at an early stage. Under these new (Lord Woolf) proposals - including the adoption of Section of the New Zealand Libel Act 1992 - litigation is intended to be a last resort.
A welcome advance in the light of the commonly held layman's view (cf Richard Ackland on Defamation Law Sydney Morning Herald 15Apr05) that complex laws favour the income of the legal profession and it is in their interests to resist reform.
But problems exist between countries within the European Community as does between the states in the Comonwealth of Australia.For example, the French are much more forgiving of affairs by their Prime Minister,(the bedroom being a sacred place I gather) failing to see that these might compromise his ability to keep his mouth shut during a moment of delicious climax when he accidentally shouts out a state secret. C'est la vie! The author notes that, perhaps as a legacy of WW11, although Germany for example has freedom of speech enshrined in her Constitution, there is an unfortunate tendency for European countries to resort to criminal law in libel cases which he asserts should be strictly a matter of civil law.
In this excellent book there are some heady lessons - like the McDonalds case which lasted for 7 years and cost McDonalds $10,000,000 and their reputation even though they technically won on a number of points at issue. It was a case of advertising versus the truth and fought in a Corporate Orwellian world that Eric Blair envisaged was to be the province of Government or Bureaucracy. It was also a case of David ( in this case Englishman David Morris a single father and postman and Helen Steel a 26 year old ex-gardener) and Goliath (the McDonalds food corporation. It makes for fascinating reading. What a folly! What a waste of resources! But how frightening for the defendants having to suffer private detective investigations, seven years of courts and cross examination etc.
Moral of the book: try to get on with your neighbours.
It is worth every cent this book. Witty, inspiring, and very well written.
