psychic Sally Morgan wins court case

Daily Mail pays £125k damages plus costs to TV psychic Sally Morgan over 'charlatan' report

Dominic Ponsford 20 June 2013

The Daily Mail has agreed to pay TV psychic Sally Morgan £125,000 in damages as well as legal costs over a 2011 story which accused her of being a charlatan.
The settlement comes ahead of an expected libel trial in the long-running case.
Her solicitor Graham Atkins read out a statement at the High Court this morning outlining the terms of the agreed settlement.
He said that Morgan was a psychic who has performed over 600 shows at theatres and venues and also appeared on television.
Following a theatre performance in Dublin in 2011 an article appeared in the Daily mail "in the context of a general attack on psychics as being charlatans", he said.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/daily-mail-agrees-pay-substantial-damages-tv-psychic-sally-morgan-over-report-suggesting-she-cheated

new Twitter case

When critics attack

Individuals associated with the Enmore Spiritualist Church have become the victim of several inaccurate websites and comment posts on the internet.

Members of the Church have tried to advise strangers who got caught up in the battle, to at the very least seek legal advice (now available at no cost from most solicitors. legal advice centres or a chamber magistrate) before making remarks on a subject they know little about.
It's worth noting some responses to similar cases:
 In Australia tweets have become the basis for defamation cases.

Liberal Party pollsters Lynton Crosby and Mark Textor are suing federal Labor MP Mike Kelly for defamation over a tweet in which he accused their campaign consulting firm of push polling.
Joshua Meggitt, the Melbourne man wrongly named by writer and television identity Marieke Hardy as the author of a hate blog dedicated to her, is now suing Twitter.
In the US, Michiel Oakes, a man convicted of the murder of celebrity dog trainer Mark Stover, has launched an appeal because a 19-year-old juror was tweeting throughout the trial, the Seattle Weekly reported.
In Britain last year, Joanne Fraill became the first juror to be prosecuted for contempt of court for using the internet and was jailed for eight months.
Fraill used Facebook to communicate with a defendant who had already been acquitted, The Guardian reported.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/thomas-kellys-death-a-trial-by-social-media-20120719-22c3z.html#ixzz212WGlS4n

Twitter : the new libel cases

Will Marieke Hardy’s Twitter case change Australian law for ever?  Twitter is being sued for defamation by a Melbourne man who was wrongly identified as the author of a “hate blog” directed at writer and TV personality, Marieke Hardy.

update: 

ABC star Marieke Hardy settles over false hate blog claims :ABC indie personality Marieke Hardy has reportedly paid $13,000 to a man she wrongly accused of running a hate blog about her. 

The out of court settlement was reached after Hardy last week published a retraction on her blog and apologised to Melbourne man Joshua Meggitt after making posts and Tweets claiming he had authored a hate blog about her, reported The Age

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 A New Zealand cricketer has been awarded £90,000 in damages by the High Court after suing for libel over a defamatory tweet, in what is thought to be the first Twitter libel trial heard in England.
 
Chris Cairns, who won 62 Test caps for his country and represented New Zealand on 267 occasions, sued Lalit Modi, the former chairman and commissioner of the Indian Premier League, over an accusation of match-fixing Mr Modi made on the microblogging service.
more at ft.com
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A little over a year ago, Courtney Love made history by becoming the first person to be sued regarding comments she made on Twitter when designer Dawn Simorangkir complained the singer depicted her as a thieving, drug-addled prostitute with violent tendencies on her old @CourtneyLover79 account. Last March, Love paid Simorangkir a $430,000 settlement, which, on top of lawyers' fees, is not chump change.

more at spin.com

Blogger Smacked With $2.5 Million Fine in Defamation Suit; Are Bloggers at Risk?

The answer is yes according to Australian libel expert Clive Evatt QC.

"not only the blogger who is often anonymous, but any person who supplies information to that blogger is held equally liable as to publication and can be sued"

In addition in March 2012 Yahoo Inc were ordered by the Victorian Supreme Court to pay damages of $220,000 to a Melbourne man for a libel that showed up in their search engine. That claimant is now suing other search engines.  Costs were awarded to him against Yahoo in the sum of approx $413,000.

Another expert says : "it is just a matter of time before the courts test the 12 month rule as well- it could be proved that every day a blog or website is published anew (unlike a print publication that disappears over time) and as the libel can be downloaded, there may be no time limit on a court action being taken. The days of anonymous blogging may soon be over as blog hosts share blame for internet defamation. Courts in every country are taking a dim view of US corporations who try to claim immunity under US law when they profit abroad"

Things are changing in the USA as well as the above case shows:

" If you are a blogger and heard about THE BAD LAWSUIT AGAINST A BLOGGER, you are probably concerned to know what is going on and are wondering if you are at risk doing what you love to do.

Well, it depends upon a few things. The answer may be, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps: 1) if you are up front, in your face defamatory (must be proven in a court of law); 2) if the state where you live hasn't updated its journalism laws; 3)if you do not cite your sources (But journalists are at risk for this as well and some of the finer ones have been caught passing off another's ideas and not giving credit for it.) 4) if you create out of thin air stories...extensive ones... that have no basis in fact and pass them off as fact, i.e. as in Shattered Glass, the film, based on a true story, or Frey's A Million Little Pieces,). But even then the idea of court is anathema for both sides and not entered into lightly. "

http://technorati.com/social-media/article/blogger-smacked-with-25-million-fine/