[ceejayoz]

UK libel law is very friendly to the plaintiff.

[tptacek]

Take a few minutes to poke around TechRights Garrett pages. This easily would have cleared the per se threshold in the US, too, although the damages assessment would not have been as straightforward.

[ceejayoz]

I'm not second-guessing this particular case; today's the first I've heard of it.

I'm just noting that the American concept of libel and the British concept of libel are wildly different in practice.

[tptacek]

Except that the "Opinion" defense in this judgement is fussier than US law (in US law, opinion is flat-out protected, honest or otherwise, so long as it doesn't directly claim to be based on undisclosed false facts), this reads pretty similar to a US libel case. I get that the two countries have very different legal doctrines on defamation, but they don't seem to be on display here.

Also: a US judge would have been a lot less nice to the defendants.

[KaiserPro]

Its not as clear cut as it appears.

Its expensive and painful to bring and defend a libel claim.

[ceejayoz]

In the US, the plaintiff must prove the statement was false.

In the UK, the defendant must prove the statement was true.

In practice, this makes the UK setup pretty nasty (long, expensive, high risk), even when it arrives at the correct result. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_v_Penguin_Books_Ltd