"Ishtar" wrote in message
news:bb177346-1644-4a74-b670-c5de55fdb702@59g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
> It's all there.
>
> Proof that the British are a bunch of shysters.
>
> http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dddp6bt4_72wds2cwcb
Well done for posting that. It shows that the judge was sensible and fair,
and that the defendant argued his case incompentently.
It is established law that a defamatory imputation is presumed to be false
and that at trial the burden is on the defendant to show it is substantially
true. I refer in this regard to Gatley on Libel and Slander 10th Edn at
paragraph 11.3, citing Belt v Lawes (1882) 51 LJQB 359, 361. No attempt was
made in the Defence to give particulars of the defamatory meanings which the
Defendant sought to justify, nor details of the matters relied upon in
support of the defence of justification, as required by the provisions of
paragraph 2.5 of the Practice Direction to Part 53 of the Civil Procedure
Rules.
The hearing of this application commenced on 7th December 2007. On that
day, the only material which was before me to throw any light upon the
matters upon which the Defendant would rely at trial in support of his plea
of justification, or the nature of the evidence which might reasonably be
expected to be available to him at trial in support of the plea, was
two-fold.
First, there was a letter which the Defendant had written to the Claimant's
Solicitors, dated 27th November 2007, enclosing a copy of the Defendant's
published book entitled "The Real Yorkshire Ripper" and, further, a number
of attachments comprised primarily of what are described as supporting
newspaper articles and reviews of his own publications, together with
letters passing between himself and John Humble. Secondly, there were
statements in his allocation questionnaire that he intended to call three
witnesses, namely "myself, John Humble and Peter ...", the last two to
be witnesses to the fact "that he did a deal for his confession" and,
further, that the Defendant wished to use expert evidence at the trial that
"Humble's voice, writing and blood type will be in question" and "the jury
will be required to read my book 'The Real Yorkshire Ripper'" and "read my
full website".
No written evidence was before me from or on behalf of the Defendant.
Having heard the submissions of the Claimant and submissions by the
Defendant, I adjourned the hearing part heard in order to allow the
Defendant an opportunity to put his Defence to the claim and his response to
this application in order. In particular, I made an order that:
"The Defendant, if so advised, do by 4th January 2008 file and serve in
accordance with the Practice Direction (a) the defamatory meanings he seeks
to justify and (b) the details of the matters on which he relies in support
of his defence of justification."
I further ordered that
"The Defendant do file and serve any written evidence upon which he wishes
to rely for the purposes of this application by 4th January 2008."
In the event, by the resumed hearing on 1st February 2008, the Defendant had
filed and served an affidavit exhibiting the book to which I have already
referred and copies of the self same attachments to his previous letter. He
chose not to specify any of the meanings which he sought to justify, nor to
give any of the required particulars, save in so far as these could be
gleaned from the affidavit. At that resumed hearing, I also allowed the
Defendant to play to the Court a recording of a BBC programme documentary
broadcast after the conviction of John Humble, notwithstanding this had not
previously been served as evidence.
I should add that I refused thereafter to allow the Defendant to produce yet
another recording. I took the view that the Defendant had had ample
opportunity before the hearing to serve in proper form any written evidence
upon which he sought to rely and the hearing was in danger of developing
into something of a free-for-all as far as the Defendant's presentation of
his case was concerned. No application had been made to me to allow oral
evidence. Miss Wilson on behalf of the Claimant understandably made
complaint that the Defendant was using the opportunity given to him to make
submissions simply to repeat in open Court, often in more graphic language,
the allegations of corruption and misconduct against the Claimant in the
publications complained of in this action.
I have considered carefully all the material the Defendant has laid before
me, including his book and the attachments to his affidavit, but I can find
nothing within that material which amounts to evidence or even an indicator
of the availability of evidence which would begin to contradict the evidence
which the Claimant has put before me in support of the proposition that each
of the allegations made in the separate publications complained are
indisputably false.
Although, as the Claimant rightly reminds me, in determining whether the
Defendant has a "better than merely arguable" defence the Court must
consider each of the publications complained of individually, as the
publications made comparable allegations, I have considered them together
for this purpose under the three heads I have already identified.
Lest the Defendant thinks otherwise, I have carefully looked through his
affidavit, and the attachments and read through his book, in order to see if
I could find anything which would amount to evidence or an indicator that
credible evidence might reasonably be expected to be available at any trial
which would go to prove on the balance of probabilities the truth of the
allegations he has made or which would go to contradict the evidence
produced by the Claimant to the contrary. As I have already stated,
however, I could find nothing to this effect. The Defendant's affidavit is
no more than assertion and reiteration of his allegations - as was his
letter of 27th November 2007, which was originally before the Court - which
in truth are based on no more than speculation and surmise on his part
arising out of this thesis developed in his book but that the letters were
not the work of a hoaxer but the work of the "real" Yorkshire Ripper, who is
still at large. At paragraph 6 of that affidavit, the Defendant asserts
that "my evidence will prove to the jury that the letters and tape sent by
the Ripper to George Oldfield were not the work of a hoaxer".
Inferentially, this must mean that his evidence would prove that, contrary
to the presumption created by the Humble convictions, and contrary to the
other evidence produced to me by the Claimant (including that from Humble
himself), Humble was not the author of the letters and tape. The Defendant,
however, did not identify to me what that evidence is. In his Allocation
Questionnaire, as indicated, he asserts that he intends to use expert
evidence at the trial where Humble's voice, writing and blood type would be
in question; and in oral submission to me, the Defendant on more than one
occasion stated that he had evidence to show that the letters were not
written by Humble and that the voice on the tape was not that of Humble and
that "anyone can see" that the letters written by the so-called hoaxer and
those in the evidence written by Humble "were not written by the same man".
However, I repeat the Defendant did not produce this evidence to me, expert
or otherwise, or produce any material to suggest such evidence is likely to
be available to him. It was no doubt in response to these assertions at the
first hearing that the Claimant produced his second witness statement,
explaining in more detail the nature of the forensic evidence relating to
handwriting, voice comparisons and blood type, which was obtained for the
purposes of the Humble prosecution, to which I have already referred. The
Defendant has produced nothing to me which even begins to contradict that
evidence.
Nothing in the attachments to the Defendant's affidavit takes the Defendant's
case on justification any further in my view. None of them goes to the
issue of whether the Claimant planted evidence in order to frame an innocent
man, save for the letter written by Humble himself to the Defendant himself,
which I have already referred to, and which contradicts such an allegation.
None of them goes to the issue whether the Claimant used improper
interrogation methods in order to extract a confession by blackmail, save
again the contradictory contents of the Humble letter. For the most part,
the attachments are extracts from newspaper articles concerning the
Yorkshire Ripper investigation, which well pre-date the material events
comprising the investigation which led to Humble's arrest and conviction, or
are letters of review of the Defendant's own book. Interestingly, one of
those letters at attachment 2, dated October 1989 from a Mr Ian Smith, said
to be Editor of Chief Constable Ronald Gregory's memoirs, states that he
agrees with the Defendant's premiss that ... was not responsible for
all the murders and "should you ever be able to support your theories by
facts" he would be delighted to become involved.
I should also add that nothing identified to me as appearing on the
Defendant's website or in the BBC broadcast which the Defendant insisted on
playing to the Court amounted to either evidence or potential evidence in
support of the plea of justification.
At its highest, the so-called evidence produced by the Defendant in his
affidavit amounts only to surmise and speculation on the part of the
Defendant, based on his belief that Humble cannot have been the author of
the letters because of his, the Defendant's, thesis that the letters were no
hoax and that the true Ripper is still at large. In his letter of November
2007, written to the Claimant's Solicitors and copied not only to the Court
but also to many other people, including many media organisations, the
Defendant not only took the opportunity to repeat his defamatory allegations
against the Claimant, but asserted that he has a "valid" defence to the
claim because "the words complained of are statements of fact and reasonable
assumptions based on certain facts and it is a matter for the jury to decide
if that is contested". I accept entirely that the words complained of are
statements of fact. Where I part company with the Defendant is in his
assertion, in effect, that he has evidence of other facts from which a jury
properly directed could draw the inference that the words complained of are
true. No such evidence of facts capable of supporting such an inference has
been drawn to my attention.
It is for all these reasons that I am satisfied that the Claimant has
demonstrated to me that the allegations complained of in this action, which
the Defendant does not dispute making, are indisputably false and that the
Defendant has no prospect of adducing any evidence at trial on the basis of
which a properly directed jury could find they were true.
It follows that, subject only to my considering whether the Defendant has
any other viable substantive defence open to him (notwithstanding no such
defence has been explicitly raised by him) or whether there is any other
compelling reason why the case should be disposed of at a trial, I am
satisfied that the Claimant is entitled to the summary judgment which he
seeks in this application.
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