| How you can help: Libel Quiz
Ten Questions on Libel - just for fun |
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1. What form of adversarial conflict was the libel law introduced to replace? |
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2. How does the UK's libel law differ from most other forms of case law? |
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| 3. Who said: 'the principles of English libel law fail to measure up to the basic human rights standards and are repugnant to public policy and the constitutional ideal of free speech'? | |
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| 4. Which country's libel laws are widely considered to be the most repressive in the West? | |
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| 5. How long was the longest libel law case in the UK's history? | |
| see note 1, at foot of page |
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| 6. In that particular case how much did food giant McDonald's allegedly spend on their legal team alone each day prosecuting two unemployed green activists for libel? | |
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| 7. What is the most common result after a libel writ is served? | |
| 8. Which of the following organisations do newspaper editors most fear will issue writs for libel? | |
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| 9. What percentage of defendants won their cases in the courts in the 10 years prior to 1996? | |
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| 10. Which of the following cases resulted in the awarding of the highest damages? | |
see note 2, at foot of page, for damages and dates |
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correct on first try
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1. The longest libel law case in the UK's history was the McLibel case, at 313 days.
2. Damages and dates
- Liberace v Daily Mirror for the suggestion that he was gay? (UKP 8,000 in 1959)
- Lord Aldington v Tolstoy & Watts for the distribution of 10,000 pamphlets suggesting that he was implicated in the repatriation of prisoners of war at the end of the second world war (UKP1,500,000 in 1989 - highest)
- Six year old Jonathan Hunt who sued the Sun newspaper (circulation 4 million) over allegations that he was 'the worst brat in Britain'. (UKP35,000 in 1991)
- Former Irish prime minister Albert Reynolds sued the Sunday Times over an article which referred to him as a 'Gombeen Man' and suggested that he had lied to the Irish parliament. (UKP 0.01 in 1996)
