Libel Case

4th June 2023

I have been silent and off-line for a while. I am not unwell, but thanks for asking. There is a court case coming up in the High Court in London on the 3^rd of July. I am suing the Mail on Sunday, along with Zoe Harcombe. This is complex and highly time-consuming case, and there are many sensitive issues on the line.

It was reported in the BMJ last year:

The controversy over the benefits of statins is set to be aired in the High Court in London, in what the senior libel judge has described as the “most significant piece of defamation litigation that I have seen in a very long time.”

Mr Justice Nicklin made the comment in a preliminary ruling in a libel action by Malcolm Kendrick, a GP, and Zoe Harcombe, a researcher, author, and blogger with a PhD in public health nutrition, against Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Mail on Sunday and Mail Online, over articles that labelled them “statin deniers” whose “deadly propaganda” had endangered lives.

In the judgment Nicklin ordered that the case should be heard in two tranches: a preliminary trial of certain issues, followed by a main trial. “It is no exaggeration to say that the parameters of this litigation are very substantial,” he said.

Kendrick and Harcombe are suing over articles published in the print edition of the Mail on Sunday and in Mail Online in March 2019. A news story in the paper was headlined “Statin deniers are putting patients at risk says Minister.”

https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o741

Watch this space, as they say.

Dr Zoë Harcombe and Dr Malcolm Kendrick have brought libel proceedings against both the publisher of The Mail on Sunday and the newspaper’s Health Editor, Barney Calman, over a series of articles first published in March 2019 in the news and health section. Dr Harcombe and Dr Kendrick complain that the Mail on Sunday made a series of libellous allegations, attacking their professional integrity with reference to their public statements and writings concerning the use and efficacy of statin therapy.    Due to the unusual complexity of the case, it has been split into two trials.  At a trial in July (Trial 1) , the court will decide, among other central issues, the meaning of the articles of which complaint is made, whether they were an expression of opinion by Mr Calman or a statement of fact and whether the defendants are entitled to rely on a public interest defence.  The court at Trial 1 will not have to determine the truth or otherwise of the published allegations, and the question of what the defendants have to prove to be true, and whether they can defend their statements as expressions of opinion will depend on the outcome of Trial 1. The focus is on what was said by Mr Calman about the claimants and whether that can be defended. 

Please note that comments have been disabled as this is an ongoing case.