UK's Highest Court Delivers Landmark Ruling

By Scott Swift

Last week, the United Kingdom's highest court issued a landmark ruling in Jameel v. The Wall Street Journal Europe that enables reporters to publish allegations that may be difficult to prove true if brought to trial. In sum, the Law Lords held that journalists reporting responsibly and on matters of public interest can publish allegations about public figures.

The lawsuit stemmed from a February 2002 article published by the Wall Street Journal Europe, which reported on Saudi Arabia's efforts in monitoring bank accounts of several businesses and individuals. The United States requested that the Saudi government monitor these accounts to  determine whether they were being used to fund terrorist organizations. One of the businesses mentioned in the article, and its president, Muhammed Jameel, sued the Wall Street Journal for libel and was awarded $74,000 in damages at the trial court level. 

In recent years, London has been deemed the Libel Capitol of the world by many journalists and First Amendment lawyers because of its numerous libel decisions against publications. It is difficult for a publication to prevail in a London court because it has to prove the allegation is true, as opposed to the plaintiff having to prove the allegation false, as is the standard in the US.

The Law Lords, however, in the Jameel case took the extraordinary step of recognizing that requiring the Wall Street Journal Europe to prove that the allegations against Jameel were true was impractiable, given the secretive nature of the investigation and the Saudi government. The Law Lord's overturned the lower courts' decisions and dismissed the lawsuit.

In the decision, one judge wrote, "We need more such serious journalism in this country and our defamation law should encourage rather than discourage it."

Many commentators tout the decision as a long overdue victory for publishers in the UK. As recently quoted in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/world/europe/), Stuart Karle, The Wall Street Journal's general counsel, aptly stated: “Going forward this decision means that if you’re a quality news organization you can fully and fairly cover the important issues of the day without this nagging problem of having a libel judge in London basically engage in an autopsy of every single thing you did and decide whether he agrees with your editorial judgment.”

Scott Swift is a Senior Claims Counsel and Loss Control Counsel at Media/Professional Insurance.