Analysis of Tort Law Cases - Case Study Example

In the recent case of Charman v Orion Publishing Group Ltd [2007] EWCA Civ 972 the appellants (the and publisher Orion Publishing Group Ltd.) appealed against a decision dismissing their defences of qualified privilege to a libel claim brought by Charman. The author was a journalist who wrote a book entitled "Bent Coppers: The Inside Story of Scotland Yard's Battle Against Police Corruption" which was published by the publisher Orion Publishing Group Ltd. The author had been an officer in the Metropolitan police until his resignation upon a finding of an internal disciplinary panel. Charman argued that the book was defamatory. The judge decided that the book as a whole would mean that Charman had abused his position by committing substantial fraud as a police officer in collusion with a fraudster from whom Charman and a fellow police officer received payments. The judge find the defence of qualified privilege without merit stating that although the problem of corruption in the police force was a matter of public interest, the subject books were neither "reportage" nor responsible journalism because the author's approach was not able to achieve the necessary neutral balance. Both the appellants argued that the judge committed an error in rejecting the responsible journalism defence. In allowing the appeal, the court ruled that the reportage defence would be established where the effect of the report as a whole was not to adopt the truth of what was being said but to record the fact that the statements that were defamatory were made.2 The instant case was a long way from the confines of reportage properly understood because a defining characteristic of reportage was missing. The book was not written to report the fact that allegations of corruption were made against Charman and the fact that he denied them and accused the investigating officers of plotting against him. The whole effect of the book was, as its sub-title made plain, to tell the inside story of Scotland Yard's battle against police corruption and that tale included Charman's alleged corruption. The book was not a neutral, disinterested report, even if the excerpts reported were factually accurate. Furthermore, it was stated that the application of the Reynolds principles had recently been clarified by the House of Lords in Jameel v Wall Street Journal Europe3 such that if the publication, including the defamatory statement, passed the public interest test, the inquiry then shifted to whether the steps taken to gather and publish the information were responsible and fair. In assessing the responsibility of the article, weight had to be given to the professional judgment of the journalist. The Reynolds principles were not intended to present an onerous obstacle to the media in the discharge of their function. Proper care was the essence of responsible journalism and the test was whether the author acted with proper professional responsibility and his assertion that he did not intend to convey the imputated words was a relevant fact to consider.4 The judge thus erred in not considering the book as whole and failing to consider what the author omitted in his editorial judgment. Applying the Reynolds principles in the light of Jameel, the court ruled that the author's writings were responsible journalism. Hence, the passages in the book complained by Charman were protected by qualified privilege. In unanimously upholding the Wall Street Journal Europe's appeal in the abovementioned Jameel case, the House of Lords has breathed new life into the doctrine of qualified privilege and has reanimated its decision in Reynolds v Times Newspapers.5 The decision has been widely welcomed, especially in light of the hesitant application of the Reynolds doctrine by our lower courts over the last seven years. It is fitting that such a decision came in a case related to perhaps the most important and newsworthy story of the 21st century so far, namely the events of September 11, 2001 and their aftermath. Jameel contains some strong statements in support of freedom of expression, and the decision is another example of our highest court remaining robust in the defence of civil liberties in the face of terrorist threats. While the enthusiasm with which the decision has been received by the press is understandable,6 it is open to question how much clarity the Lords have in fact given to Reynolds qualified privilege. The Law Lords have urged greater liberalism by our lower courts, yet they have confirmed the framework of Reynolds privilege, declining to recast the defence along the lines advocated by the Wall Street Journal.7 The article which gave rise to the libel action in Jameel concerned the extent of cooperation by Saudi Arabia with the United States in its "war on terrorism" and, in particular, in relation to the monitoring of bank accounts for possible links to terrorist organisations. On February 6, 2002 the Wall Street Journal Europe published an article headed "Saudi Officials Monitor Certain Bank Accounts", with a smaller sub-heading "Focus Is on Those With Potential Terrorist Ties".8 The gist of the article was that the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority, the kingdom's central bank, was, at the request of US law enforcement agencies, monitoring bank accounts associated with some of the country's most prominent businessmen in a bid to prevent them from being used, wittingly or unwittingly, for the funnelling of funds to terrorist organisations. This information was attributed to "US officials and Saudis familiar with the issue". In the second paragraph, a number of companies and individuals were named, among them "the Abdullatif Jamil Group of companies" who, it was stated later in the article, "couldn't be reached for comment". The claimants, a prominent Saudi Arabian businessman, and the trading company of which he was president and general manager, sued in the English courts, despite neither owning property nor trading within the United Kingdom (though the claimant company did have a trading reputation here). In the trial, it was ruled against the defence of qualified privilege because the defendant had failed to obtain the claimants' response to the inclusion of their names prior to publication. The jury found the libel proved and awarded damages to the claimants of 30,000 and 10,000 respectively. The Court of Appeal dismissed the defendant's appeal. The political context of the story was significant, both for its public interest value and for the difficulty faced by the Wall Street Journal in reporting it. As Lord Bingham of Cornhill noted in his judgment, the issue of Saudi Arabian co-operation with the United States following September 11, 2001 was "a matter of high international importance, a very appropriate matter for report by a serious newspaper". A large majority of the suspected September 11 hijackers were of Saudi origin, and it was believed that much of their financial support came from Saudi sources. While Saudi Arabia was an ally of the United States, the extent of its co-operation with US authorities was a matter of some domestic sensitivity. The Saudi authorities might be embarrassed if the fact of their co-operation were to become known widely. For this reason the matter was particularly difficult to investigate and to report. Further, when it came to the trial the newspaper could not prove the truth of the story because its sources in Saudi Arabia were afraid of reprisals from Saudi authorities if they testified, although their information had been confirmed in Washington through a confidential source within the US Treasury, who also could not be identified. The Reynolds case established that in certain circumstances the media may publish information which later turns out to be false, if it is information which the public has a right to know. Underlying the Reynolds defence of qualified privilege is the concept of "responsible journalism".9 In Reynolds Lord Nicholls presented "illustrative" factors which might be taken into account in determining whether qualified privilege was made out.10 While acknowledging the risks of unpredictability and uncertainty, Lord Nicholls stressed that qualified privilege as interpreted in Reynolds had "the merit of elasticity", which allows the circumstances of individual cases to be analysed "in their infinite variety". He claimed that "[w]ith the enunciation of some guidelines by the court, any practical problems should be manageable" and anticipated that, over time, "a valuable corpus of case law" would be built up. The House of Lords in Jameel expressed considerable disquiet about the application of Reynolds qualified privilege by our lower courts. Lord Hoffmann stated that the case "suggests that Reynolds has had little impact upon the way in which the law is applied at first instance". Lord Scott commented that "the judgments in the courts below which have led to this appeal have not correctly applied the principles for which the Reynolds case stands as authority". Accordingly Lord Hoffmann stated that it was necessary to restate the principles. He started by positing that it would be more appropriate to use the term "Reynolds public interest defence" rather than privilege. He presented a three-stage approach for analysing qualified privilege: first, the public interest of the material; secondly, the inclusion of the defamatory statement; and thirdly, the test of responsible journalism. In a significant advance of the formulation in Reynolds, Lord Hoffmann held that there was no need to pursue the traditional duty-interest equation: "The Reynolds defence was developed from the traditional form of privilege by a generalisation that in matters of public interest, there can be said to be a professional duty on the part of journalists to impart information and an interest in the public in receiving it. The House having made this generalization, it should in my opinion be regarded as a proposition of law and not decided each time as a question of fact. If the publication is in the public interest, the duty and interest are taken to exist." This removes one aspect which media defendants have been required to prove. While the question of the public interest would be a matter for decision by the judge, without regard to what the editor's view may have been, the media will no longer have to show a duty to publish the article. The "useful cross-check" advocated by Eady J., whereby one asks if the journalist would be subject to legitimate criticism for not publishing the story, is not valid. Lord Hoffmann emphasised that the article in question must be considered as a whole, without isolating the defamatory statement. It would not be necessary to find a separate public interest justification for each item of information within the publication. In relation to the inclusion of defamatory material, Lord Nicholls emphasised that allowance must be made for editorial judgment, as it was essentially a question of how the story should be presented. Opinions "may reasonably differ over which details are needed to convey the general message", and the judge's "advantage of leisure and hindsight" must not be allowed to destroy the defence. Finally, consideration must be given to whether the steps taken to gather and publish the information were responsible and fair. Lord Hoffmann stressed that the standard of responsible journalism was "as objective and no more vague than standards such as 'reasonable care' which are regularly used in other branches of law". In relation to Lord Nicholls' 10 factors in Reynolds, Lord Hoffmann was at pains to point out that they must be applied flexibly and not rigidly. He said: "[The 10 matters] are not tests which the publication has to pass. In the hands of a judge hostile to the spirit of Reynolds, they can become ten hurdles at any of which the defence may fail. That is how Eady J treated them ... [But] the standard of conduct required of the newspaper must be applied in a practical and flexible manner. It must have regard to practical realities ... Instead, Eady J rigidly applied the old law." In unusually strident criticism of a trial judge, Lord Hoffmann went on to observe that Eady J. had been criticised on two previous occasions by the Court of Appeal for using the "old law on classic privilege" unrealistically in a media context. The Lords held that the subject-matter of the Wall Street Journal Europe's article easily passed the test of being in the public interest. On the question of including the defamatory material, the Lords held that the names were an important part of the story. Simply to have said "prominent Saudi companies", or a similar formulation, as suggested by the claimants (and by the trial judge), would not have served the same purpose. Lord Scott commented that the journalist's ability to give the names "added verisimilitude to his report". Lord Scott stated that the failure to delay publication and the effect on diplomatic relations were insufficient reasons for denying the defence of qualified privilege. On the facts, the inclusion of a comment by Mr Jameel would have added nothing to the story because he was not in a position to know if his accounts were being monitored by Saudi authorities or not. This meant that the newspaper's refusal to postpone publication of the story was not a circumstance of any real weight in the scale for measuring the presence or absence of responsible journalism. Lord Bingham commented that "[i]t might be thought that this was the sort of neutral, investigative journalism which Reynolds privilege exists to protect". Baroness Hale stated that "[i]f ever there was a story which met the test, it must be this one". By majority the Lords held that it was not necessary to remit the case for a retrial. The circumstances of Jameel suggest that critics of Reynolds were right to be concerned that Lord Nicholls' 10 factors would prove difficult to apply in practice.11 The Law Lords did not shy away from acknowledging this problem: Lord Bingham made the striking comment that Eady J.'s ruling "subverts the liberalizing intention of the Reynolds decision", and Baroness Hale lamented a "narrow and rigid approach [to Reynolds] which defeats its object". While these forceful comments are to be welcomed, particularly in relation to a news story connected with terrorism, the important question now is whether Jameel has created any further clarity so that journalists, editors and judges can apply the Reynolds privilege coherently, consistently, and in the interests of free expression. The clearest message from the Lords in Jameel is that more room should be given to editorial judgment, and that an article must be examined as a whole. Lord Hope stressed the importance of appreciating the whole context of a piece of information in a story: "A piece of information that, taken on its own, would be gratuitous can change its character entirely when its place in the article read as a whole is evaluated. The standard of responsible journalism respects the fact that it is the article as a whole that the journalist presents to the public. Weight will be given to the judgment of the editor in making the assessment, as it is the article as a whole that provides the context within which he performs his function as editor." Unquestionably this is a crucial clarification of how Lord Nicholls' criteria in Reynolds should be applied. It is to be hoped that Jameel will put an end to the "litany of criticism" to which journalists and editors have been subjected for failing to satisfy the "obstacle course" of Reynolds factors, just as the trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover confirmed that allegedly obscene books should not be judged on their "purple passages" alone. The Lords also gave firm encouragement to the reporting of stories of public interest, especially in the context of terrorism. Eady J. had held that it was contrary to the public interest to publish the names of those being monitored, because the consequence of doing so was to expose on a secret monitoring operation and to act counter to the US Government's assurances to the Saudi Arabian Government. Lord Scott was firmly of another view: "Subject to D notices and the like, it is no part of the duty of the press to co-operate with any government, let alone foreign governments, whether friendly or not, in order to keep from the public information of public interest the disclosure of which cannot be said to be damaging to national interests." Lord Hoffmann said that in principle he would be "very reluctant to accept the proposition that it cannot be in the public interest for a newspaper to publish information which one's government had agreed not to publish". It is of crucial importance that Jameel overturned the suggestion that the press should kowtow to governments, whether domestic or foreign, in determining whether to publish matters of public interest. This would be to violate the press's crucial role in a democratic society and would contradict the very function of investigative journalism. As Lord Nicholls stated in Reynolds, the press "discharges vital functions as a bloodhound as well as a watchdog". While the "new legal landscape" promised by Reynolds that freedom of expression is seen as a "constitutional right," Jameel takes us closer to this goal. The Law Lords have given their backing to responsible investigative journalism, with Baroness Hale urging that "[w]e need much more serious journalism in this country and our defamation law should encourage rather than discourage it". Jameel should encourage journalists, newspapers and the wider media to report on the "war on terror" less fearfully, more thoroughly and more perspicaciously, as it is a matter of genuine public interest and concern. It is to be hoped that in seven years' time we are not similarly lamenting a failure to respect the "liberalising intention" of this decision. Furthermore, in four post-Reynolds decisions, Lord Nicholls' principles have been applied by domestic courts in GKR Karate v Yorkshire Post Ltd,12 Grobbelar v News Group Newpspapers,13 Al Fagih v HH Saudi Research & Marketing UK Ltd,14 and Loutchansky v Times Newspapers (No.2).15 All of the cases make interesting points about both the reach and the content of the Reynolds privilege; and when considered together, the cases indicate that the new defence has already undergone a process of rapid evolution. The earliest indication of the use to which Reynolds might be put was provided by GKR Karate v Yorkshire Post Ltd. The allegation raised in GKR was that the applicants were selling karate courses taught by unqualified instructors for exorbitant sums of money. The paper claimed both justification and--drawing on Reynolds--qualified privilege. On the basis of the evidence presented, it was accepted that this story fell within the Reynolds test. In methodological terms, the judgment seems to apply the Reynolds test within the traditional qualified privilege paradigm. Popplewell J. asked first if the publication should attract privilege: "31. Did the public at Leeds have a legitimate interest in receiving the information, and were the defendants under a social and moral duty to communicate to the public at Leeds the particular information contained in the article" The answer to this question was apparently "Yes", although the judgment does not offer any reasons for that conclusion. Popplewell J.'s decision nonetheless confirmed that the Reynolds' application would not be limited to "political stories". Popplewell J. then used Lord Nicholls' ten-point plan as a check list on the basis of which to decide whether or not the privilege was lost. The overall test to apply was whether the defendant had done "What a reasonable and responsible journalist would do". Popplewell J. went through the factors one by one, scoring them for or against the defendant, and eventually concluding that the newspaper's failings were not sufficient to negate privilege. GKR did not go to appeal on the substantive qualified privilege point. The first important appellate decision post-Reynolds was Grobbelar v News Group Newpspapers, although what the Court of Appeal (Simon Brown, Thorpe and Parker L.JJ.) had to say about qualified privilege was rather submerged beneath its conclusion to overturn as "perverse" the original jury verdict in Grobbelar's favour. The Court of Appeal's method in Grobbelar is quite different from that adopted in GKR. The judgment follows a route which makes it clear that the question of whether a story raises "a matter of serious public concern" is not an issue anterior to--but one inherently bound up with--the way in which the story came to be published. His judgment notably fails to accept the proposition advanced by The Sun that the stories were privileged just because of their substantive subject matter.16 Instead, the core subject matter of the stories was viewed as just one relevant factor in the overall privilege equation but that factor was not dominant. Simon Brown L.J. reserved that status to points 9 and 10 in Lord Nicholls' list and the question of the "tone" of The Sun's articles. So what was so objectionable about "the tone" that led the Court of Appeal to conclude that qualified privilege did not arise Simon Brown L.J. identified the following fatal flaw: "38 There can be no doubt that this newspaper campaign carried prejudgment of guilt to its uttermost limits ... [T]he Sun took upon themselves the roles of police, prosecuting authority, judge and jury. 39 [I]f newspapers choose to publish exposes of this character, unambiguously asserting the criminal guilt of those they investigate, they must do so at their own financial risk." If the case is analysed in this way, one might doubt whether The Sun would have derived any benefit from coming within the reach of privilege anyway. If all that Grobbelaar really tells us is that the Reynolds privilege does not attach to the publication of what the publisher must obviously know to be a lie then the decision does not take us very far in the direction of enhancing media defences. It may be that in stressing the "tone" of the story, Simon Brown L.J. is essentially telling newspapers not to be--in descending levels of unacceptable "tone"--vitriolic, caustic or nasty in what they publish. If so, the utility of the Reynolds defence is perhaps being narrowed quite appreciably. The subsequent Court of Appeal decision in Al Fagih v HH Saudi Research & Marketing UK Ltd is perhaps more encouraging to media defendants.17 The Al Fagih judgment strikes as significant primarily because it seems to have picked up the Reynolds principle and used it to substantially weaken the impact of the repetition rule when public interest stories are in issue. The case was triggered by reports in a Saudi-owned newspaper--which sold only 1500 copies in the UK--concerning persistent squabbling, which involved the mutual airing of many defamatory insults and accusations, between various factions within a Saudi dissident group. The paper offered readers a running commentary on the in-and-outs of the squabble, reporting the views of all the various protagonists. Simon Brown L.J.'s leading judgment does rather infer that, notwithstanding the potentially broad reach of the "matter of serious public concern formula", some judges see "political" information as lying at the heart of Reynolds' privilege. The Court also took the view that reportage of this nature did not impose any duty of verification on the publisher. In such circumstances, much of the malice element of any attempt to rebut the privilege would simply disappear. Absent a duty to verify, reckless publication of a falsehood becomes an irrelevance. Malice could only be found in publication of known falsehoods or in the publisher's motive, the Court suggested that the claimant might overcome the defence if she could establish that the publisher was motivated by spite against the claimant rather than by a desire to convey information to readers. With the exception of that point, Al-Fagih may be seen as something of a niche judgment, providing useful protection for a particular type of journalism. Loutchansky v Times Newspapers (No.2)18 may have rather wider significance. Loutchansky might be classified as one of those judgments in which a lower court takes apparent pains to stress that it has neither the power nor the desire to clarify--let alone to depart from--a decision of a higher court, even if there are manifest difficulties with the decision concerned. And then goes on to subject the decision to very substantial "clarification" indeed. Lord Phillips M.R.'s judgment "recognises" the Reynolds privilege as a new, sui generis creation, rather than an extension of the existing concept of privilege. The gist of Lord Phillips' reasoning seems to be that we do now have a one stage test, in that all of the inquiries previously made at the malice stage of a qualified privilege defence are now expressed in a similar or more exacting fashion at what would previously have been seen as the occasion stage. Putting the matter shortly, if Lord Nicholls' ten point plan requires--inter alia--that a paper prove it has not been reckless as to untruth in order to avail itself of the Reynolds privilege, it does not make much sense to assume that the privilege can be rebutted by the claimant proving the defendant was reckless. Lord Phillips also indicated that the "spite" element of the malice test also became irrelevant when public interest information was in issue. This seems a much clearer reading of the implications of Reynolds than was offered by the Reynolds court itself. Some observers might even feel inclined to say that Loutchansky takes clarification close to the point of overruling Reynolds. However one styles Loutchansky's treatment of Reynolds, construing Reynolds in this way would seem to obliterate the jury's role altogether in any claim of privilege and confirm an effective transfer of the burden of proof on the issue of recklessness from the claimant to the defendant, but those issues did not seem to concern the court in Loutchansky. In addition to "clarifying" the method of the Reynolds test, Loutchansky also seemed to afford the defence a potentially very wide reach. One of the most noteable features of the Court of Appeal's judgment is that the opinion does not appear to attach any explicit significance at all to the substantive nature of the impugned story centred on corruption and criminality within the Russian government. The "seriousness" of this subject was evidently taken as read by the court. However, the absence of any explicit allusion to this point in the judgment may well mean that the case is subsequently invoked as authority for the principle that stories on any subject matter at all could attract Reynolds privilege as long as they are the product of "responsible" journalism. Granted, as long as we accept that the "seriousness" of the story in public interest terms is a relevant factor within Lord Nicholls' list, it is plausible to argue that the less "serious" the issue the more "responsible" the production process will have to be for Reynolds privilege to arise. But even if that view is right, it seems from a policy perspective to be a most unhappy situation to arrive at because of the Court of Appeal's evident unwillingness in Loutchansky to acknowledge what we might term the teleological geneology of the Reynolds judgment. The arguments offered on behalf of Times Newspapers by Anthony Lester in Reynolds were essentially an attempt to import a version of the Sullivan v New York Times19 defence into English law. That defence was tailored quite precisely to deal with the problem of politicians using libel laws to chill press coverage of their activities. As initially conceived, the Sullivan defence did not embrace "public interest" issues in a more general sense. It is often overlooked that the substantive ancestry of Sullivan lies in large part in English law. Specifically, it can be found in Wason v Walter.20 The ratio decidendi of that judgment was that absolute privilege at common law attached to verbatim press reporting of parliamentary proceedings and qualified privilege attached to accurate summaries of such material. But in the course of a wide-ranging opinion, Cockburn C.J. offered a powerful illustration of what has come to be known as the "argument from democracy" rationale for protecting media expression. The attachment of privilege to press discussion of political matters served a valuable public purpose- the purpose of privilege is to enhance politicians' electoral accountability. It is not self-evident that the issues of corruption within the Russian governmental system or among Premier League footballers should be regarded as matters with similar depth. The sale of dodgy karate lessons or the internecine bickering of Saudi dissidents would seem of even less significance. It may well be that in all four issues we can readily identify a "public interest" of sufficient importance for us to conclude that these stories should not be regarded as private issues for the purposes of defamation defences. But to place them on a par with what was under examination in Reynolds seems implausible. But the evident breadth of the reach of the Reynolds privilege leads immediately to consideration of its second dimension; that is to say its effect. In conclusion, the manifest deficiencies in Reynolds itself have been ameliorated but by no means eliminated by subsequent developments. The obvious trend in the case law is towards a more liberal understanding of press freedom in the libel law context. But if we are to lend greater certainty and coherence to the development of the Reynolds privilege, it may be that the door opened by the House of Lords in Derbyshire County Council v Times Newspapers21 to the importation of American free speech jurisprudence into English libel law might be an appropriate path to pursue. The notion of "liberalism" should be used carefully in this context. That is not a concept that should be equated with unfettered press autonomy to publish even a limited type of defamatory material. There is little obvious merit, for example, in the absolutist approach to the First Amendment. Suffice it to say that one can extract from that body of law a coherent approach to the qualified privilege issue in respect of information published by the press to the world at large. This approach recognises two distinct generic categories of information and two distinct levels of protection in respect of false stories published in the press. Its rationale is firmly rooted in the argument from democracy justification for free expression. The first category concerns "political information", relating to the activities of elected and appointed government officials. In respect of information which the defendant demonstrates to fall into this category, the claimant shoulders the burden of proving knowing or reckless falsehood on the defendant's part. A second category of "public interest information" demands that the claimant proves negligent falsehood by the defendant to recover. Such a distinction obviously raises difficulties as to where the boundary lies between political, public interest and purely private information. Drawing a line between negligence and recklessness may also prove problematic on a case by case basis. But the distinction seems to offer a more principled and elegant approach to the question of how much protection our domestic law should grant to disseminators of false, defamatory information. Indeed, there is a growing trend that what amounts to responsible journalism in the eyes of the Court of Appeal is tantamount to judicial acceptance of a right to libel tipping the balance against the personal right to protect a reputation. References: (1868) L.R. 4 Q.B. 7 (1964) 254 US 376 [1993] 1 All E.R. 1011 [2000] EWHC QB 180. See also [2000] 2 All E.R. 931, CA [2001] 2 All E.R. 437 [2001] EWCA Civ 1634 [2001] EWCA Civ 1634 [2002] 1 All E.R. 652 [2002] 1 All E.R. 652 Bonnick v Morris [2002] UKPC 31, [2003] 1 A.C. 300 Bonnick v Morris [2003] 1 A.C. 300. Charman v Orion Publishing Group Ltd [2007] EWCA Civ 972, [2008] 1 All E.R. 750, (2007) 104(41) L.S.G. 26, 2007 WL 2941638 Ian Loveland, "A New Legal Landscape Libel Law and Freedom of Political Expression in the United Kingdom" [2000] E.H.R.L.R. 476 Kevin Williams, "Defaming Politicians: The Not So Common Law" [2000] M.L.R. 748 Reynolds v Times Newspapers [2001] 2 A.C. 127 Roberts v Gable [2007] EWCA Civ 721, [2008] 2 W.L.R. 129 Robertson & Nicol, Media Law (4th edn, 2002), among others. Siobhain Butterworth, "Star-spangled judgment", Guardian, October 11, 2006. SPRL (No.3) [2006] UKHL 44, [2007] 1 A.C. 359 Read More