First Brit Prosecuted Over Twitter Libel 116
Tasha26 writes "A former town Mayor, Colin Elsbury, made legal history by being the first Brit to pay damages for libel on Twitter. His tweet on polling day said 'It's not in our nature to deride our opponents however Eddie Talbot had to be removed by the Police from a polling station' [and was held to amount] to pure election slur. The Twitter libel was settled at Cardiff High Court with total bill hitting £53,000 (£3,000 compensation + £50,000 legal fees). The fine works out at more than £2,400 per word. After Courtney Love's recent £260k settlement in a Twibel case, this case reaffirms that anything posted in the public domain is subject to libel laws."
Erm... small issue (Score:5, Interesting)
The fine was £3,000. About £130/word.
The legal fees are nothing to do with the fine - Britain has a "loser pays" legal system so being ordered to pay legal fees isn't considered part of the fine.
On the plus side, this means there's a rather strong deterrent against frivolous lawsuits - "no win, no fee" (assuming your solicitor takes the case on that basis) only applies to your legal team, not the other sides. On the minus side, it means that a big company can add a paragraph to their legal threatograms saying "Please note that if you lose in court, you'll have to pay our fees. We're up to £1,500 already and we haven't even started yet."
Derp (Score:2, Interesting)
"The fine works out at more than £2,400 per word."
On the topic of meaningless algebra, if you express the length of a regulation football (American) field in cm it also works out to just under £5 per cm.
If he were in free fall at terminal velocity for 10 seconds, he'd be spending over £96 for every meter he fell. That's a lot of money!
Or we could stop expressing numbers idiotically and just say he was fined £3,000 and charged £50,000 in legal costs.