Murray (defendant/appellant) v Riley (claimant/respondent)

Thursday 21st July 2022

By Appellant’s Notice filed on 22 February 2022, the Defendant (D) appeals against the order made by Nicklin J dated 20 December 2021 giving judgment to Claimant (C) on her claim, and the award of £10,000 damages to C.

The publication on which D was held liable was a tweet (to D’s 7,250 followers) on 3 March 2018 referring to C’s tweet (the Good Advice Tweet) made 3 hours before (to C’s 625,000 followers) posted when C knew of an attack of Jeremy Corbyn by throwing of an egg while he was visiting a mosque.

In a Judgment given in April 2020, the judge held that D’s tweet meant that C had publicly stated that Mr Corbyn deserved to be violently attacked, and that by doing so C had shown herself to be a dangerous, stupid person and people should not engage with her.

D pleaded defences of truth, honest opinion, public interest publication and qualified privilege. The last was not pursued at trial.

The judge dismissed each of the substantive defences and made an award reduced to reflect the provocative nature of the GAT.

View hearing:

Part 1

Part 2