Judgment in the action against the Observer and Guardian’s Carole Cadwalladr will have huge implications for UK journalists
The highly anticipated judgment in the libel action brought by multimillionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks against the Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr will be handed down this week. The landmark verdict will potentially have huge ramifications for press freedom and investigative reporting.
Mrs Justice Steyn will deliver her judgment by email on Monday morning. The decision will be the culmination of an often rancorous three-year legal battle and could send a chilling effect throughout British journalism.
Banks, who donated a record 8m to the pro-Brexit Leave.EU campaign group, is suing Cadwalladr for defamation over two instances – one in a Ted video talk and another in a tweet – in which she said the businessman was lying about his relationship with the Russian state.
After four days of hearings in January, Cadwalladr’s lawyer, Gavin Millar QC, argued in closing written submissions that the journalist’s reporting on Banks and the Russian state was of the greatest public interest imaginable.
Millar told the high court in London that Banks and his close associate Andy Wigmore, Leave.EU’s director of communications, had given “contradictory and misleading accounts about his [Banks’s] meetings with Russian officials and the extent of his relationship with the Russian state” as well as about who had orchestrated the contact with the...
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