By Ashley Young-
A judge who told Laurence Fox and three people he’s locked in a High Court libel battle should get on with the case, and not seek a soft way out. over a Twitter spat to settle their dispute over the ‘pointless exchange’ out of court.
That is the opinion of a media lawyer who spoke to The Eye Of Media.Com on the condition of anonymity.
The actor is being sued by former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake, Coronation Street actress Nicola Thorp and drag artist Crystal after he referred to them as ‘paedophiles’ during an online row in October last year.
In turn, Mr Fox – who founded the Reclaim Party and stood as a candidate in the last London mayoral election – is counter-suing the trio over tweets accusing him of racism.
The case is currently set for trial unless the parties can resolve the dispute out of court, and a ruling on Wednesday revealed Mr Fox is ‘minded to’ ask for the case to be decided by a jury rather than a judge – which is now highly unusual in defamation cases.
Giving the ruling on preliminary issues, Senior Master Barbara Fontaine said the parties should ‘seek to resolve this dispute by negotiation and settlement’.
However, the lawyer told this publication: ”the High Court judge has a job to do, and that’s to determine whether the litigants in question was defamed or not. It may require examining if the alleged defamed words are supported with any facts or not. As the offensive words have to do with paedophilia and racism, it may be that the judge wants to avoid the task of examining the basis of those claims, but his job is to rule on whether the complainants were defamed or not”.
The judge said: ‘It would seem incredible to most ordinary people that the parties are prepared to spend what could amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds on such a pointless exchange.
‘There are many more useful ways in which the parties, all apparently intelligent and talented people, could expend their energy and resources.
‘I urge them to consider seriously how they might find a way to reach a compromise and end this dispute.’
The judge said Mr Fox’s solicitors estimate his legal costs will be about £500,000 if the case is heard in two stages, and about £360,000 if it is heard in a single full trial – but this would increase to about £490,000 if it is a jury trial.
Actor Laurence Fox
She said she has ‘very serious doubts’ about whether an application for a jury trial would be likely to succeed, and noted there has not been a successful application for a jury trial in a defamation case for ‘several years’.
However, she said she does ‘not consider it appropriate to pre-judge the outcome of such an application’ and he should be given the opportunity to consider whether he wishes to request a jury trial once he has seen the claimants’ defence case.
Senior Master Barbara should get on with the job and not seek soft way out.
Mr Fox’s legal team told the judge that depending on the defence case put forward by the three claimants, he may wish to ask for a jury trial because his ‘counterclaims concern the accusation of racism in a highly charged political climate on this particular issue’.
They argued it would be ‘less appropriate’ for a judge to decide the case than a jury ‘who will be drawn from a random cross-section of the public, so that their views would be more likely to reflect the public view’.
The judge made orders relating to case management, including that the claimants have two weeks to serve details of their claim and their defence to Mr Fox’s counterclaim.
She also said Mr Fox will have to serve any application for a jury trial within a month of receiving those details.