Mionis v Democratic Press SA & Ors
2014
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
United Kingdom
CORAM
- SIR DAVID EADY
Areas of Law
- Contract Law
- Media Law
- Civil Procedure
2014
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
A confidential settlement in a libel claim involving defamatory articles was alleged to be breached due to indirect references. The court found the settlement's clause too vague to enforce and held no breach occurred.
Judgment
Sir David Eady :
On 13 November 2013, the parties to this libel action entered into a confidential settlement agreement scheduled to a Tomlin order of the same date. Each side had the benefit of advice from experienced London solicitors during the negotiations. It was part of the agreement that it should be governed and construed in accordance with English law (clause 12.1) and that any dispute arising out of it should be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts (clause 12.2). The Claimant now alleges that the Defendants are in breach of its terms and seeks an injunction against each of them, with a view to enforcement, and also an inquiry as to damages occasioned by the alleged breaches. The terms of the settlement were to be regarded as confidential, subject to certain specified exceptions, which included such disclosure as was “necessary to implement and/or enforce any part of the settlement agreement” (clause 11.3.4).
The background concerns a series of articles published in the Greek language newspaper Demokratia from 29 October 2012 to 13 May 2013, which are said on the Claimant’s behalf to form part of “a sophisticated campaign against him” and to have included “gratuitous and deeply offensive personal attacks upon him”. There were altogether 18 such articles, all of which were published on the front page of the newspaper’s website and most of them on the front page of the hard copy editions. The claim was limited, as I understand it, to such publications as took place within the jurisdiction of England and Wales. It is accepted that the newspaper is not published here in hard copy but the Defendants accept that it may have been read here “by a very few people on the internet”.
The subject matter of the articles was the so called “Lagarde list”, which had been passed in 2010 by the then Finance Minister of France, Mme Lagarde, to the Greek government with a view to helping the relevant authorities to identify any individuals involved in tax evasion. The list consisted of a spreadsheet containing the names of approximately 2000 Greek citizens linked to bank accounts held at the Geneva branch of HSBC. Although I understand that the list had originally been passed in confidence, it was published in full (both in hard copy and online) on 27 October 2012 by Hot Doc magazine. The contents of the list thus became widely known and this underlies an innuendo meaning pleaded in the libel action.
The Claimant is described as a