Katie Hopkins has been found liable for defamation and ordered to pay £24,000 in damages (plus costs) after making some rather unfortunate statements about fellow journalist Ms Jack Monroe.
The issue dates back to 2015 when, following a protest in London a war memorial was vandalised. Confusing the claimant, Ms Jack Monroe (a food journalist and left wing blogger) with another journalist who had openly stated that she did not have a problem with the vandelism.
For reasons best known to herself, Ms Hopkins tweeted the picture of the vandalism to Ms Monroe with comments which led the Court to conclude that a reasonable reader would have concluded that she was suggesting that Ms Monroe “condoned and approved of scrawling on war memorials”.
Despite requests from Ms Monroe and her solicitors, Ms Hopkins failed to offer any apology or pay the suggested sum of £5,000. She had removed the offensive tweet two hours after posting it but then posted another which in which she described Ms Monroe as “social anthrax” which was hardly a conciliatory step.
Uncharacteristically, Ms Hopkins kept her mouth closed in court, declining to offer any evidence. This did not help her case as, in the absence of any evidence to rebut the allegation of malice in relation to the second tweet, the Court had no choice but to accept this argument.
The Judge found that that the tweets in question were defamatory and that they caused serious harm to Ms Monroe’s reputation and ordered Hopkins to pay £24,000 compensation plus costs which are reported to be in the region of £300,000.
The moral here is that, what ever social media you use, be careful what you write. If you do stray into making defamatory comments, the best course of action is to limit the harm that is done by removing the offensive material and, if necessary, apologise quickly. One of the key elements for the claimant in a defamation claim is that they have or are likely to suffer serious harm. If you can limit the likelihood of harm being suffered, you reduce the risk of a court claim.
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