We have experience in a wide range of defamation proceedings, ranging from pre-action advice to fully contested High Court clams and appeals.

Following a clear letter before claim, many publishers agree to remove defamatory content or correct it so that it is no longer defamatory.

Publications about individuals and companies are frequently made online, allowing a claim to be made in the Courts of England and Wales.

Under section 1 of the Defamation Act 2013, a statement is not defamatory unless its publication has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the reputation of the Claimant.

It is not uncommon for the subject not to be directly named.  However, this is not necessarily fatal to any claim for defamation, provided that it can be shown that reference is being made to the Claimant.

Modern defamation claims have a preliminary trial on the issue of the meaning of the words used.  That allows the parties to take stock after the preliminary trial and consider whether to settle the claim.,

A common defence that is mounted in defamation proceedings is that the publisher f the comment is acting in the public interest.  A recent Court of Appeal case (Serafin v Malkiewicz [2019] EWCA Civ 852) adopted quite a strict approach to this defence, although this case is currently being appealed to the Supreme Court in 2020, when the scope of this defence will hopefully be further clarified.