What’s The Meaning Of All This? The Mcalpine V Bercow ‘Tweet’ Libel Action

The Lord, the Speaker's wife, the asterisks and a moron in a hurry....

In Court recently has been the libel action brought against Sally Bercow, former Celebrity Big Brother contestant and wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons, by Lord McAlpine, former Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party and a prominent Tory in the 1970s and 1980s.

Lord McAlpine was successful in a judgment given on 24 May 2013.

Background

Readers will recall that on 2 November 2012, the BBC's "Newsnight" broadcast a report which made serious allegations against 'a leading Conservative politician from the Thatcher years'. The programme alleged that this politician was guilty of sexually abusing boys living at the Bryn Estyn care home in Wales in the 1970s and 1980s. Newsnight did not name the politician and, towards the end of the report, the presenter said it did not have enough evidence 'to name names'.

There was a frenzy of speculation, including on social media such as Twitter. On 4 November 2012, Mrs Bercow tweeted the following:

Why is Lord McAlpine trending? *Innocent face*

Her Twitter account had approximately 56,400 followers.

The libel action commenced on 7 December 2012, Lord McAlpine claiming damages over the Tweet.

There have been two hearings recently, both arising from the fact that key factor in the action was a disagreement about whether the Tweet bore a defamatory meaning or not.

Hearing 1 - Procedure

The first was about procedure. On 25 April 2013, Mr Justice Tugendhat ruled that there should be a separate trial of that preliminary issue about meaning. This is not a new approach but the judgment indicates that it is likely that this "will become a standard feature of defamation litigation".

One reason is that the Defamation Act 2013 (which was passed the same day as the hearing) will once in force provide that defamation actions should normally be tried without a jury. Click here see our previous bulletin.

In theory, the question of meaning used always to be one of the questions for the jury - but in future, without the need for a jury, it will almost always make sense for the judge to rule on any dispute about meaning as early in a libel action as possible - in order, as Tugendhat J said, to fulfil "the overriding objective to achieve justice... [which] includes saving expense, dealing with a case proportionately with the importance and complexity of the case, dealing with it expeditiously and fairly, and allotting to it an appropriate share...