By Sheila Mckenzie-
A multi-disciplinary law firm has lodged a legal suit against Newsquest Specialist Media for libel over an article suggesting that it failed to act honestly and transparently towards clients.
The two articles, published in December 2019 and January 2020, made reference to a case where a driver ran up £400,000 worth of credit hire charges while her car was being repaired. The credit hire firm involved was Direct Accident Management, which is owned by Anexo Group, the listed company that owns Bond Turner. The claimants are seeking damages, an injunction and related relief for defamation.
The first claimant, Direct Accident Management Limited (“DAM“), describes itself as specialising “in all aspects of vehicle accidents, post-accident assistance and vehicle hire”. It says that it trades as ‘DAMS’, employs over 150 individuals, and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authorit
In a preliminary ruling on meaning, Mrs Justice Tipples DBE found that the articles alleged DAM to be guilty of fraud in relating to charging ‘exaggerated and grossly excessive’ credit hire costs to its customers. This conduct, according to the articles, dated back to 2013.
The publication alleged the company to be an outlier and the anomalous epitome of poor practice within the wholly unregulated credit hire sector in which it operates; and that such poor practices in which the DAM routinely engages and for which it is the worst offender, including exploiting loopholes to maximise credit hire costs dishonestly, and by using deliberately underhand methods, elongating repair periods to increase credit hire costs.
The article presented the company as being guilty of widespread fraud, in particular of the fraudulent concoction and exaggeration of excessive and extortionate credit hire costs and was generally guilty of generally dishonest and underhand practices, going back many years.
The natural interpretation of the article’s words was that it operated in a manner that is unusually dishonest and wrongful, even within the unregulated and generally unethical credit hire sector.
The judge, using the principle of how the hypothetical reasonable reader would interpret the article, found that the articles were allegations of fact, suggesting there were reasonable grounds to suspect that Bond Turner failed to act honestly and transparently in respect of introductions and referrals from DAM.
The claimants pointed out that the first thing the reader could see at the top of the first article was a picture of sharks swimming in murky waters, coupled with the headline ‘Credit hire sharks circle as market reacts to excessive costs’.
It was complained of that the article suggested that credit hire organisations such as DAM acted in an ‘unscrupulous predatory manner’ with a degree of dishonesty.
The second article said it was an investigation into the ‘year’s most notorious credit hire case’. The judge found that the reader was told that DAM was a ‘rogue operator’ and had been called a ‘real bunch of cowboys’.
On the relationship between DAM and Bond Turner, the law firm was said to be part of the same group and the reasonable reader, the judge concluded, would understand there was a potential conflict of interest.
She rejected the argument from the defendant that the firm’s role would be understood as being ‘more peripheral’, given that Bond Turner was part of the same group and acted for the claimant in the case.