John Alexander Melvin Hemming v Sonia Vanessa Poulton [2024] EWHC 1860 (KB)
Background
The Claimant in this case, Mr Hemming was a former MP and businessman. The Defendant, Sonia Poulton is a freelance journalist. The Claimant pursued a libel claim against the Defendant seeking damages and an injunction arising out of publications by the Defendant.
In this blog, we discuss a judgment that has recently been handed down following a trial to determine the preliminary issue of the natural and ordinary meaning of 2 of the publications referred to in the Particulars of Claim (later referred to as Publications 1 and 5).
Publication 1 was a segment of a YouTube video. Within this video, the Defendant was interviewed by the podcast host. The podcast was published by the podcast host on YouTube and in an audio form on Spotify and Stitcher. Within the video, the Defendant made comments such as:
“I know Esther, I’ve talked to Esther several times. And she came out and she was saying that she had been abused as a child in – Cannock Chase and she said it was an MP – and she never named the MP… it was actually John Hemming who outed himself, on his own blog…”
But he approached me directly and said that what I had said was wrong, it was damning and he was going to take legal action unless I removed it there and then… he had a problem with me just reporting the story, which I thought was quite interesting given that he had outed himself. She never outed him – he’d outed himself.”
Publication 5 was a statement published on the Defendant’s own fundraising page. An extract from this publication is set out below:
“Earlier this year I was interviewed by the police about a potential breach of a reporting restriction regarding an old case… There was an inordinate pressure applied to the Attorney General’s Office, the Metropolitan Police and the CP by people who are desperate to stop me reporting on matters of public interest including child abuse…”
The natural and ordinary meaning
The Judge started her judgment by summarising the law on meaning. She referred to Nicklin J’s decision in the case of Koutsogiannis v Random House Group Limited [2020] 4 W.L.R 25 which states:
“The Court’s task is to determine the single natural and ordinary meaning of the words complained of, which is the meaning that the hypothetical reasonable reader would understand the words bear”.
The Judge considered who the hypothetical reasonable reader would be in this case. She concluded that the hypothetical reader in this case would be someone who is interested in online content, outside the mainstream media and interested in child abuse allegations about people in power.
The Claimant pleaded that the natural and ordinary meaning of publication 1 is that:
(1) he is a paedophile who raped Esther Baker when she was a child; and
(2) that he used baseless threats to attempt to hide his sexual misdeeds with children.
The Judge concluded that the natural and ordinary meaning of the first element of Publication 1 is that Esther Baker made public allegations of child abuse by an MP and John Hemming revealed that those allegations were about him. The Judge concluded that this meaning was defamatory at common law. She focused on the negative connotation of the word “outed” used by the Defendant.
In relation to the second element of Publication 1, the Judge felt that the Claimant’s suggestion that the legal threats were made to “attempt to hide his sexual misdeeds with children” was an extremely strained interpretation. Instead, the Judge concluded that the natural and ordinary meaning was that the Claimant is very proactive in protecting his reputation, including through the use of legal threats. The Judge decided that this limb of the meaning was not defamatory at common law.
In relation to Publication 5, the Claimant pleaded that the innuendo meaning of the publication was that:
(1) he (and other MPs) had the motive of covering up child abuse; and
(2) that his motives were to cover up the allegation that he was a paedophile that had raped Esther Barker.
The Judge acknowledged that a Claimant may plead innuendo showing that the words complained of are defamatory because of some particular fact not contained in the statement itself but which is known to those to whom the statement is published. The Judge actually accepted the Claimant’s argument in relation to this and acknowledged that the likely audience of the publication would be aware of the Defendant’s work more broadly and therefore some of them would have seen one or other of the videos discussing the allegations by Esther Baker. The Judge acknowledged that this would have an impact on the reader’s understanding of Publication 5 and the wider context of the allegations being made.
The Judge therefore found that the innuendo meaning of this publication was that the Claimant’s (and other’s) motivations for trying to cover up child abuse by members of the Establishment should be questioned. Those motivations could include the desire to cover up their own criminal activities. The Judge found this meaning to be defamatory at common law given the serious connotations.
The case will now proceed to the stage where the Defendant has the opportunity to plead one of the statutory defences.
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