{"id":799,"date":"2009-12-01T23:52:12","date_gmt":"2009-12-01T23:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/2009\/12\/01\/dacre-unconstructive-says-eady\/"},"modified":"2009-12-01T23:52:12","modified_gmt":"2009-12-01T23:52:12","slug":"dacre-unconstructive-says-eady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/2009\/12\/01\/dacre-unconstructive-says-eady\/","title":{"rendered":"Dacre \u2018unconstructive\u2019, says Eady"},"content":{"rendered":"

The leading libel judge Sir David Eady has said that personal attacks on him by the Daily Mail<\/em> editor Paul Dacre are unconstructive and do nothing to further the debate on privacy. <\/p>\n

In a speech to the Society of Editors<\/a> a year ago, Dacre said the British press was having a privacy law imposed on by the \u201carrogant and immoral judgments\u201d of Mr Justice Eady.<\/p>\n

Giving evidence to a Commons Select Committee<\/a> in April, Dacre recalled his remarks about the High Court judge:<\/p>\n

\n

I\u00a0described his judgments as \u201carrogant\u201d and \u201camoral\u201d. I\u00a0am aware those are strong words \u2014 they are not personal, I am talking about his judgments \u2014 but I\u00a0used those words because I felt passionately that he was adjudicating in matters that Parliament should be deciding, and the fact he was not taking on board Parliament, which represents the public, has huge implications for British society.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Speaking today\u00a0at a conference on privacy<\/a> organised by the campaign group Justice, Eady said:<\/p>\n

\n

In his evidence to the Parliamentary Select Committee, the Daily Mail<\/em> representative told them, for reasons that remain completely obscure, that I had set myself above the legislature. He also reaffirmed the charges of \u201carrogance and amorality\u201d against me. (He was good enough to add, however, that this was not intended to be anything personal.) <\/p>\n

This is natural, if there is no other way of letting off steam. I think it simply has to be recognized as an inevitable consequence of adopting the balancing approach and the \u201cintense focus\u201d on the particular facts of the case.<\/p>\n

Actually, this ad hominem <\/em>approach does absolutely nothing to further the debate. What would be more constructive would be for those who do not like the way things have gone to challenge the balancing role given to judges by Parliament \u2026 and to say what they would put in its place.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Eady continued his attack on Dacre, whose name he never mentioned.<\/p>\n

\n

When he was before the Select Committee in April, the man from the Daily Mail <\/em>was asked by one of its members, \u201cIf you don\u2019t like how the judges are interpreting the Human Rights Act, would you favour a statutory law of privacy?\u201d His response was that he did not want a law of privacy at all. <\/p>\n

The logical conclusion of that argument is surely that neither judges nor legislators should give effect to Article 8. Yet that is, as I have suggested, hardly a realistic option. <\/p>\n

If what he calls \u201cthe wretched Human Rights Act\u201d were repealed, we should just be back in the position where individuals would have to go to Strasbourg to vindicate their rights rather than obtain relief in their own courts.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Eady rattled through his speech in\u00a0an understated way, though it was none the less devastating for that. <\/p>\n

He concluded with some remarks on \u201clibel tourism\u201d, noting dryly that the libel judges knew about this only because they read about it in the newspapers: \u201cit is not a phenomenon that we actually come across in our daily lives\u201d. <\/p>\n

He pointed out that it was already the law that a claim which does not relate to a \u201creal and substantial tort\u201d could be struck out as an abuse of process. The authority he cited was Jameel v Dow Jones<\/a>, decided by the Court of Appeal in 2005.<\/p>\n

Although Eady did not mention it, this principle was applied by Mr Justice Tugendhat last month in a case called Lonzim v Sprague<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Describing the defamation claim as \u201ctotally without merit\u201d, Eady\u2019s colleague struck it out.<\/p>\n

<\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

No related posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The leading libel judge Sir David Eady has said that personal attacks on him by the Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre are unconstructive and do nothing to further the debate on privacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}