First Libellous Blog Case Settles
Blogging means writing an online journal, and in the first case of its kind, advertising tycoon Sir Martin Sorrell has accepted £120,000 in damages to settle an action involving libel and privacy issues after a hate campaign was run against him through an anonymous online blog. Damages were accepted with no admission of liability by the defendants.
Sir Martin had sued Italian firm Fullsix Spa and two of its executives whom he accused of being behind the defamatory blog and an anonymous email showing a “grossly intrusive” computer generated image of Sir Martin and one of his Italian executives, Daniela Weber. One of the executives apparently referred to Sir Martin and Ms Weber as “the mad dwarf and the nympho schizo”. Nice!
Ms Weber has also accepted £30,000 damages on the same basis.
Sir Martin was unable to establish that the defendants were actually behind these publications, despite employing computer whizzes to get behind the anonymising software used to draft the messages. As a result, and despite being £120K poorer, the defendants are also claiming victory.
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