Apparatchiks Beware… tweets may cost money
Less than two months before the Assembly Elections, a timely reminder for the various partys’ keyboard warriors:
An inaccurate tweet claiming a rival had been ejected from a polling station cost a Welsh councillor more than £53,000 today.
Judge Seys Llewellyn QC approved a settlement at Cardiff Civil Law Centre after Caerphilly county councillor Colin Elsbury acknowledged he had wrongly defamed town councillor Eddie Talbot.
Nigel Jones of JMD Law, who represented hobby shop owner Mr Talbot, told the court that tweet did his client’s reputation great damage because “the implication was that Mr Talbot was removed by police for criminal or disreputable conduct”.
In a rare defamation case outside London, the Plaid Cymru politician agreed to pay Mr Talbot £3,000 compensation and his legal expenses of more than £50,000 after making the false claim on his Twitter page on June 4, 2009.
Don’t say you haven’t been warned…
There’s something wrong with a legal system where the cost of bringing an action is nearly twenty times the amount of compensation you get at the end of it.
No win No fee…it’s a contagion that’s going to stifle free speech.
Legal costs are a sick fucking joke, someone will lose arms or legs and recieve £80,000 to £150,000 just to find out that the Barrister who spent abount twenty minutes on the case gets about £25,000 to £35,000
A lot of barristers don’t even want to fight the case in court because they’re so blatantly shite at their job.
But in all probability his opposite number will also be shite at it so they’ll balls around in the outside corridors for a few hours out of earshot of the client talking about golf or investments or the new court clerk with big tits.
This will give the impression of professionalism to the client, every now and then they’ll return to the nervous client to tell them how serious hard-ball the other team is playing.
Yep you have to make it look like you did miracles and the imaginary horse trading begins in theatrical style in the Court coridors with wigs and gowns and a very nervous distant audience.
Time for more illusion they’ll break until after lunch then strike a deal thats not wonderful for the client but bloody fucking marvellous for themselves
SAME BULLSHIT EVERY SINGLE TIME
oneill:
Repeating the offending remarks may also constitute action from our legal friends.
I keep forgetting that I have a Twitter account. But I think I am the only person in the world that Stephen Fry does not know.
But isnt Twitter the one with 140 (?) characters which is a very expensive way to libel somebody (per character).
A large proportion of posters on Slugger must have been seriously burned in legal proceedings. Never an opportunity is missed to slam the legal profession. We really are the most hated profession of all – still more hated than the Bankers.
Mind you, £50,000 and the case can only have been two years old. Thats amazing, even for something as intricate as defamation. Obviously thats for the solicitors, barrister and probably QC. But its still pretty big.
A significant number of slugger posters must have been seriously burned in legal proceedings. Never is an opportunity missed to have a quite angry dig at the legal professions. We are really are the most hated of all professions – still much more hated than Bankers.
£50,000 is massive mind you – even for something as difficult and intricate as a defamation case, never mind a unprecedented one. I’d imagine that most of that goes that Senior Counsel was involved in that but even then, split £50k between senior counsel, junior counsel and the solicitor, thats still pretty big.
wierd? when i went back to that page, it showed that my first psot didn’t work. that was a waste of time
Dont worry about it Mr Hutz. Many people think lawyers duplicate work unnecessarily but Im not one of them
But I think I read somewhere that the lawyers are considered above politicians but below estate agents. The only profession below politicians is journalists.
the digger.notes,
Repeating the offending remarks may also constitute action from our legal friends
It is clear from the rest of the piece that it was a false claim… but as it’s not my blog to take legal chances with, I’ve removed it anyway.
Dont worry about it Mr Hutz. Many people think lawyers duplicate work unnecessarily but Im not one of them
But I think I read somewhere that the lawyers are considered above politicians but below estate agents. The only profession below politicians is journalists.
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lol, would it would be heartening to know think that we are above politicians. Views of politicians are strange though. “politicians” as a group are despised. Individual politicians are generally well liked.
The survey (Australian I think) differentiated between local politicians and national politicians. I understand it is not libellous to say “————–(a profession) are all crooks”