The law until recently was that the Media had to bear the burden of proving the truth of any defamatory statements. It followed that in situations where sources of stories died or were reluctant to come forward, it was impossible to satisfy the burden and there are a number of recorded cases where damages were awarded in Britain for statements that were subsequently proved true. John Profumo, Minister for War, collected libel damages for the suggestion that he was sharing a prostitute's bed. He later admitted that the allegations were true. Liberace won a fortune when the Daily Mirror insinuated that he might be a homosexual many years before he died of AIDS. My first big libel case was brought by Reuters against the distributor of "Playboy" magazine for libel over an article which republished an allegation made in the USA Senate to the effect that the CIA would frequently plant Reuter's journalists with disinformation and false stories. I advised Playboy to fight the case and bring in witnesses from the American Senate where the allegations had been made. My clients calculated the cost and tore out
the offending pages.

In an age of instantanious communications, satellite television, international magazine, simultaneous book launches, British libel laws is not an eccentric anachronism. US publications in Britain had constantly been edited to avoid the possibility of American public figures flying to Britain to vindicate reputations they could'nt protect at home. "Time" magazine edited out a jive about Henry Kissinger e.g. "Henry doesn't lie because it's in his interest, he lies because it's in his nature" before it was published in Britain. Now that we are living in a global village, does it make any sense for public figures to have different reputations in different parts of the world.

I have mentioned one way in which British laws in the last couple of years under the influence of the "freedom of expression" guarantee has changed law by denying the right to sue to Government and political organisations. Of course, individuals from those organisations can still sue for slights on their own character but there are a couple of major ways in which the laws have in the last year and last few months been changed.

The first is in respect of damages. Libel damages were incredibly unpredictable in Britain. We would give a woman who had been raped, 5000 sterling pounds for compensation, if you lost a leg, you'd get 10,000 pounds, if you lost a finger you'd get 5,000 pounds. Along came Jeffrey Archer who sued over the allegation he had sex with a prostitute. he admitted having paid her 2,000 pounds to get away from the press. There was a great deal of circumstantial evident against him but nonetheless the newspaper could not shoulder the burden of proving that he actually had sex. They called the prostitute to swear she had
sex with him, they called a solicitor who had seen them go upstairs to have sex but they could not prove he actually had sex. The prostitute remembered him because he had nodules on his back but no one asked him in the witness box to take off his shirt. He won 500,000 pounds. Elton John won 1,000,000 pounds. Along came Lord Aldington who had been
attacked by Lord Tolstoy. The jury awarded 1,500,000 pounds against Tolstoy.

That was when libel law first started to change because Tolstoy took his case to the European Court in Strasburg, which is the final Court of Appeal on human rights issues. The British Government had signed a treaty with other European countries and agreed to change the law if the Court of Human Rights decides that it doesn't measure up to basic human rights standards. The Court said that awards of this amount were having a chilling effect on free speech and could never be justified. They were disproportionate because the ultimate test that the Court applies is whether is is really necessary in a democratic society to have awards of these kind to remedy slights to reputation. The Court said that it wasn't. At the same time, a case in the British
Court of Appeal involving a TV personality who'd sued a newspaper had at the same time applied the Tolstoy provision and so the result is that Judges have decided for themselves with the assistance of the European Court and it wasn't necessary for Britain to change the common law. It is now almost inconceivable that damages for a libel action, no matter how severe the libel could exceed 150,000 pounds. This is a dramatic change compared to a few years ago. Judges have taken control on the
principle that it is not necessary and being criticised in a newspaper cannot be as bad as losing a leg.