There were, what, 7 people in the case against the Daily Mail? Whoi now face a £50 million legal bill?
Dunno if that’s including their own costs or just the Mail’s costs. Apparently there’s some insurance around somewhere. But I’m dubious about whether that really exists. Certainly dubious about how much of anything it would cover.
So, that’s £7 million each to find – minus whatever the insurance is.
Prince Harry, Elton John, David Furnish, Elizabeth Hurley, Sadie Frost and Baroness Doreen Lawrence
One, mebbe two, of those could get wiped out, no?
Please let Doreen be one of them!
Please let it be Doreen!
Unfortunately I reckon they’ll target Elton first since he’s the most minted.
But it’ll be fun if they all end up having to plead poverty.
Only a shame Hugh Grant possessed the prudence to duck out of it all.
Ooooh, that’s a point. Are they jointly and severally liable? Or just individually for their share?
Depends on the judge’s order for costs? It looks like Doreen got suckered into it through her own stupidity but will the principals protect her? Then there are the others in the background orchestrating it and egging them on.
Her principals won’t protect her from anything. She signed on for the publicity and the payout. She’s getting what she deserves.
At least in defamation i think it’s expected if you support someone financially to bring their claim, then you’re on the hook if it fails and they can’t pay. So i suspect its The Johns who will be asked to make up the remainder. The insurance the claimants had was only for 14 million. so even for Elton that’s a big whack. Harry could of course raise his share if you believe the headline Netflix deals amounts. It’ll be great fun when he pleads poverty and that they only got a 100th of that and anyway it was all Meghan who earnt it. One thing he won’t be able to get out of is the cash he got for the other cases he won and were settled by the sun.
They never got paid that. When someone has a $100m deal, it doesn’t mean Netflix turn up with a truck full of cash. It means there’s a stage deal with options that Netflix can exercise.
The point is, they want to put someone on screen and if it turns out they’re a hit, they don’t want them going elsewhere straight away. Or threatening to leave and demanding huge money.
And each time they exercise an option, the money goes up. That’s to keep people happy. Do a good first thing, you get a lot more next time etc.
So, they’d have got probably less than a million. And that isn’t for them. Its for the production
hmm … if the below from the express is true it looks like costs could be capped at 8million possibly the insurance they are supposed to have taken out might cover it.
“The Independent reports that before the trial, all parties filed their budgets to the court. The total budget for the claimants was £18.7m while the budget for ANL was £19.9m.
After a costs management hearing last year, Mr Justice Nicklin and Judge David Cook concluded the sums were “manifestly excessive”. They then allowed for budgets totalling £4.1m for the claimants and £4.4m for the ANL. The actual budget could be higher.”
If legal costs are 50 and the claimants are on the hook between them for 18, then you have to ask who really lost here.
Delicious. As the marvellous WB suggests legal experts listened to them and noting the lack of credible evidence ploughed on regardless per their instructions.
Legal costs are usually joint and several, so the winners just go after whichever loser has the deepest pockets and allow the losers to argue amongst themselves how to divide it up. Of course, the losers have to pay their own costs as well, but that would probably have been divided up already.
Good. The lot deserve crippling consequences: they wanted to cripple free speech and get a great payday along the way 🙁
Hurley has the…means… to persuade the judge, methinks.
Not unless she has a pre-pubescent boy to tempt him with.
I’m disappointed in her.
This was pretty quixotic. I thought she had more acumen.
I’m sure Vanessa Kensington would never have been so stupid.
If she needs comforting I’m not doing anything at the moment.
Couldn’t happen to a better bunch of cunts.
“no credible evidence was ever presented”
Jesus Christ. I have no doubt there were lots of meetings with solicitors urging their clients not to pursue this.
“No credible evidence” but a combined 40 million pound budget for the case (I suppose the judge will be paid out of filing fees).
You can’t hate lawyers enough. There’s no bottom.
Oh there is, but they’re often occupied.
And the statements they’re making about the judge and justice put them in contempt of court…
Soros to the rescue.
Soros only funds stuff where he gets payback from the public purse. This would be all downside with no obvious Marxist upside. Paying to go to court in the first place maybe, covering the costs for a loss is just throwing evil money after bad.
They bent/abolished the rules of the criminal justice system to appease Doreen Lawrence. I’m sure they’ll work something out here.
Yes, but removal of double-jeopardy is something the elite have wanted for a long time, to get a second (or more) bite of the cherry when it comes to public enemies, so in that Doreen was just a useful idiot.
There is nothing to be gained from this loss, if Doreen has to take the hit (assuming “joint and several liability for costs”) then that’s just too bad, but not something the elite are going to dip into their pockets or the public purse for.
The wolves-in-sheeps-clothing have far too much other fuckery to spend their time, efforts and public money on than a bunch of (previously) wealthy delusional nobody’s.
From today’s Telegraph
That sounds a bit like quite serious criminality, depending on what was later said in court in in sworn statements.
If I were a senior partner at Atkins Thomson I’d be dusting off my old law books and looking up conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, for starters.
In a history of the years leading up to The Great War I enjoyed the diplomacy of an allusion to the intellect of Kaiser Bill as “wayward”. I suppose you could apply it to his distant kinsman Harry too.
Can anyone give me any reason why Doreen Lawrence is venerated as she is other than that she’s a black woman? What has she actually done as a Dame other than grift and scowl superciliously?
Just so. Drummer Rigby’s mum wasn’t ennobled was she? Ditto Henry Nowak’s parents.
And so on, and so on.
And so on and so fucking on and on and on.
It’s Tommy this, and Tommy that, and ‘Chuck him out, the brute!’
Nice.
In US, a judgement can be enforced on whoever has money. Here, Elton John and his not-his-damn-husband could be hit up for all of it.
It seems the court already ruled last year that it’ll be joint & several liability:
https://associationofcostslawyers.co.uk/costs-lawyer-journal/court-makes-early-decision-in-high-profile-claim-that-claimants-will-be-jointly-liable-for-common-costs/
And it looks like the judge took the opportunity to try to politely warn them to give up and not be so stupid:
“it is imperative that the parties and in particular the individual claimants have the clearest possible understanding as to the consequences”
However it looks like some of the liability for the Mail’s costs might be individual for each of them – the joint & several ruling is said to be only for adverse common costs, which I think means the costs that relate to all their claims together. It’s not my field, but it reads as if there could also be some costs relating to each claimant’s individual circumstances, and those would fall personally on the relevant individual.
Which could be the perfect result, if the Mail can get most of their millions back from Elton John under joint & several liability, but there’s still enough non-common costs to bankrupt the others.
That report is interesting. They may have made an agreement on costs but that in no way ties the hands of Mr Justice Nicklin. He could do an entirely different costs order but I guess that would be unusual. I expect the DM will press to have all their costs covered by the plaintiffs notwithstanding earlier discussions.
As if the bunch of losers wasn’t fun enough already, apparently Simon Hughes is one of them too. Perfect.