Laurence Fox’s has lost a bid to overturn his High Court libel defeat for calling a drag artist and a charity boss “paedophiles”.
The actor-turned-activist was sued by ex-Stonewall trustee Simon Blake and Ru Paul’s Drag Race contestant Crystal – real name Colin Seymour - after a row on Twitter.
The incident began after Fox posted online about Sainsbury’s decision to mark Black History Month in October 2020.
He was accused of being a “racist” by Mr Blake and Mr Seymour, and in response he used the “paedo” slur.
High Court judge Mrs Justice Collins Rice found Fox responsible for libel last year and ordered him to pay £180,000 in damages.
In a ruling on Friday in the Court of Appeal, senior judges upheld the main finding of libel but cut the damages to £90,000.
And Mr Justice Warby, sitting with Lord Justice Dingemans and Lady Justice Elisabeth Laing paved the way for a fresh legal battle by ruling that Fox’s counterclaim of libel - for being called a “racist” - had been wrongly dismissed.
They found Mrs Justice Collins Rice made errors when assessing his arguments, including a contention that the tweets dubbing him a “racist” had torpedoed his acting career.
“In my opinion, the only conclusion reasonably available to the judge was that the publication of each of the claimants’ tweets did cause serious harm to Mr Fox’s reputation generally”, the judge concluded.
He sent the case back to the High Court for a further trial, when the defences of truth and honest opinion will be tested.
In the original ruling on the “paedo” libel claim, Mrs Justice Collins Rice found: “By calling Mr Blake and Mr Seymour paedophiles, Mr Fox subjected them to a wholly undeserved public ordeal.
“It was a gross, groundless and indefensible libel, with distressing and harmful real-world consequences for them. They are entitled by law to an award of money, to compensate them for those damaging effects, and to ensure that they can put this matter behind them, vindicated and confident that no-one can sensibly doubt their blamelessness of that disgusting slur and that they were seriously wronged by it.”
She ordered Fox to pay £90,000 to each of his victims, and left him facing a hefty legal bill for the High Court feud which played out over a full libel trial.
The Court of Appeal decision cuts the damages to each of the victims to £45,000.
An injunction was also imposed to stop Fox from targeting Mr Blake and Mr Seymour again online.
Reacting to the appeal ruling on Friday, Fox posted a video online in which he did not mention the points of his challenge which had been rejected.
He highlighted the judge’s ruling on harm from the “racist” slur, and said: “I am so grateful for this outcome. I hope it plays a part in putting freedom of speech exactly back where it belongs, at the cornerstone of any free society.”
The row started when supermarket giant Sainsbury’s publicised its support for Black History Month and said it was providing a safe space for its black employees.
Fox called for a boycott of the supermarket, was dubbed a “racist”, and responded with the libellous tweets.
In his evidence at the trial, Mr Seymour said he faced “overwhelming and distressing” abuse as a result, adding: “I did and still do worry about the impact Mr Fox’s tweet could have on me financially if people connect me, in my drag persona, with paedophilia.”
Fox, who issued an apology for the “paedophile” slurs, attempted to argue that he had used them as a baseless accusation in the same way that he considered the racism claim against him as false.
But he faced in court his old social media posts, including one where he wore black face, and was dubbed “an intelligent racist with an agenda”.
He also complained that his acting career had been torpedoed by the tweets calling him a racist.
To support this argument, he put forward details of his own career trajectory with a litany of offers from 2019 and work drying up from 2021.
In the past, he says he was approached about possible roles in Succession and Disney’s Obi-Wan, as well as TV stints in Catchphrase, The Masked Singer, and a Gordon Ramsay show.
But he lists just nine interactions in 2021 and 2022, including an offered online talk with Whoopi Goldberg and Sophia Loren, an approach to appear in Channel 4’s Scared of the Dark, the offer of a role in ‘Monkey Island’ and a possible appearance in a production called ‘Fornication Under the Consent of the King’.
Mr Justice Warby said the High Court judge’s assessment of this part of the case had been “flawed” and her ruling contained “ variable and inconsistent” wordings.
Fox, who was one of the stars of ITV’s Lewis during his acting career, is the leader of the Reclaim political party.
He is currently awaiting criminal trials over allegations that he encouraged the destruction of ULEZ enforcement cameras and that he posted a sexual image online without consent.
