The highest court in Britain today gave a landmark ruling in favour of investigative journalism when it upheld an appeal by the Wall Street Journal.
Saudi businessman Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel came to London to sue the Wall Street Journal Europe for libel. Following a three-week trial in 2004, he left court with modest damages - £30,000 for himself and £10,000 for his company, after the trial judge, Mr Justice Eady, had ruled out the newspaper's Reynolds defence.
After today's ruling the Guardian's legal director Siobhain Butterworth writes: "It has taken a US publisher with First Amendment sensibilities to put English law back on track and improve protections for investigative journalism."
The Wall Street Journal noted along similar lines: "The ruling by the five so-called Law Lords that sit in Britain's House of Lords is expected to help set a new standard for British libel trials by providing journalistic organizations operating in the U.K. with protection more akin to that enjoyed by the media under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution."
Mohammed Jameel said: "What the Wall Street Journal Europe wrote in February 2002 was that the bank accounts of the ALJ Group were being monitored at the request of the US authorities. That was not true. Mr Justice Eady and the Court of Appeal ruled that I was libelled. The House of Lords ruled that I was not, because it was reasonable for the Wall Street Journal Europe to print something that was false. So be it. I was only ever interested in proving that the allegations were untrue."
