Green energy industrialist Dale Vince’s libel claim against the publisher of the Daily Mail has been thrown out by a High Court judge.
Mr Vince sued Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) over an article which he claimed falsely suggested he was the subject of harassment allegations.
The article, printed in June last year, was headlined “Labour repays £100,000 to ‘sex harassment’ donor” and reported that the Labour Party was handing back money to donor Davide Serra, while also referring to fellow donor Mr Vince.
An employment tribunal in 2022 heard that Mr Serra had made sexist comments to a female colleague which were found to amount to unlawful harassment related to sex.
A hearing in London in February was told that Mr Vince was “seriously defamed” by the article’s headline, image and captions, because they made readers think he was the subject of the allegations.
But lawyers for ANL opposed the claim, telling the hearing that it would be clear to people reading the whole article that Mr Vince was not the donor being referred to in the headline.
In a ruling on Monday, Judge Jaron Lewis struck out Mr Vince’s claim, stating that it was “not potentially viable” and “bound to fail”.
He said: “There is a contradiction in the claimant’s case. The claimant accepts that the headline and photograph do not accurately summarise the article, although his pleaded case on ‘extrinsic facts’ is that they always do.”
He continued: “At its highest, it could be said that some readers will have believed that headlines always accurately summarise the underlying article, but this is no more than an opinion, and is insufficient to support an innuendo meaning.”
He added: “The claim is not potentially viable, and there is no basis for exercising discretion in the claimant’s favour.”
Mr Vince, who is chairman of English Football League Two side Forest Green Rovers FC and the founder of green energy supplier Ecotricity, has previously donated to Labour and the climate group Just Stop Oil.
The hearing in February was told that the main image of the article at the centre of the claim was one of Mr Vince, with another image which had his face circled, but the article said in its first two paragraphs that the allegations related to Mr Serra.
The article was also published the previous evening on The Mail+, the paper’s online subscription platform.
The online version was amended 74 minutes after publication to change the picture of Mr Vince to one of Mr Serra, and the headline was then changed the next day to match the printed version.
Godwin Busuttil, for Mr Vince, acknowledged that the article as a whole was not libellous, but said the headline, photographs and captions were enough to make readers who did not read the story believe that Mr Vince was the subject of the “plainly defamatory” and “entirely untrue” accusations.
Alex Marzec, representing ANL, said that while the article’s layout was “perhaps not the clearest presentation of information”, it “only takes two paragraphs” for readers to know that the allegations did not relate to Mr Vince.
In his ruling, Judge Lewis said: “I am certain that this claim is bound to fail, even assuming that the claimant can establish that this is a true innuendo claim and prove the key facts upon which the claim is based.”
He continued: “The headline, photos and caption must be read together with the article.
“Taken together, it is agreed that the article was not defamatory of the claimant at common law, and so the claim must fail.”
In a statement following the ruling, Mr Vince said: “It’s a disappointing decision but I think this issue is of great importance and so am seeking permission to appeal.
“This case centres around the reality of how people read the news and the frequent disconnect between headlines and corresponding articles.
“In this case, the Daily Mail ran a headline about Labour repaying £100,000 to ‘sex harassment donor’ using two pictures of me one with a red circle around my face and naming me underneath.
“There was no picture of the individual they were actually referring to and no reference to them until deep into the article.
“A substantial number of people only read headlines and would have thus been given an entirely false impression.
“As it stands, the Daily Mail can get away with this kind of personal smear – I’m trying to change that.”
