Thompson v James
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD JUSTICE LONGMORE
- THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD JUSTICE UNDERHILL
Areas of Law
- Tort Law
- Human Rights Law
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
Mrs. Jacqueline Thompson was sued by Mr. Mark James, Chief Executive of Carmarthenshire County Council, for defamatory blog posts made in 2011 accusing him of corruption and misuse of funds. The court upheld the trial judge’s decision that the statements were defamatory and that the term 'slush fund' implied corruption. Mrs. Thompson's attempt to use Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights for her defense was rejected. The legality of Council's funding of libel proceedings was noted but not adjudicated upon.
Judgment
Lord Justice Longmore:
Introduction
Mr Mark James is the Chief Executive of Carmarthenshire County Council. Mrs Jacqueline Thompson is a private citizen who is aggrieved by certain planning decisions made by the Council in relation to applications made by her and her husband Mr Kerry Thompson and her brother-in-law Mr Eddie Thompson between March 2004 and October 2007. She and her husband have a small holding in Llanwrda where she is a community councillor, vice chair of the community council and chair of the Community Association. She stood unsuccessfully for election to the County Council in 2012.
In 2006 she (sometimes with her husband) wrote a number of letters accusing both the Head of Planning for the Council (Mr Bowen) and Mr James of corruption, although Mr James had no involvement in the planning decisions complained of by Mrs Thompson. Mr Bowen sued Mr and Mrs Thompson for libel. The Thompsons did not seek to prove the allegations of corruption and their defence of honest comment was struck out. The action was in due course settled by a public retraction and apology in October 2007, as well as by an agreement to pay £7500 towards Mr Bowen’s costs.
Notwithstanding this defeat, Mrs Thompson started a blog in March 2009 under the title “Carmarthenshire Planning Problems and more”. Her postings were highly critical of the Council. She made repeated false statements of fact for which the judge held that there was no foundation and made various allegations of corruption, lying, perjury and misappropriation of public money.
Mrs Thompson also started to film proceedings of the Council and posted the resultant clips on YouTube. On the 3 rd occasion of doing this on 13 th April 2011 a Council Officer, a Mr Davies, was sent up to the public gallery to ask her to stop. She did stop, left the public gallery and then made an allegation that, while they were in the public gallery, Mr Davies had assaulted her and attempted to steal her mobile phone. The judge found that this allegation was false and known by Mrs Thompson to be false. He also held that it was an attempt to pervert the course of justice.
On 21 st July 2011 a Mr Milan who maintained a blog under the name “Madaxeman” published an open letter critical of Mr James and the Council and urged Mr James to reply to this letter as did Mrs Thompson. Mr James did reply saying (among other things):-
“Mrs Thompson and her family … have been running a campaign of harassment, intimidation and def