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| As
they await a decision on their €1.2
million euro defamation claim against
former PJ police inspector Gonçalo
Amaral, disturbing details have emerged
of another libel action taken by the
parents of Madeleine McCann - this time
against a British newspaper. Integral in
the couple’s claim were references made
to “comments posted by readers below the
online version of the article”, writes
Dominic Gover for International Business
Times. It is not clear exactly how the
High Court dealt with this aspect of the
McCann’s claim, but a successful
‘result’ effectively opens the
floodgates to all kinds of litigation by
people who consider reader commentary
attached to online news articles
offensive. In this case, Press Gazette
reports this morning that the libel
claim has already been settled. In his
own report for IBT, Gover talks of
unspecified damages. The story the
couple objected to appeared on the front
page of the Sunday Times in October last
year, and was widely reproduced by other
news services, blogs and social media -
all of which would have allowed for
reader commentary and feedback. It
centred on allegations by a former
British spy that the McCanns had
suppressed “a crucial piece of evidence”
from police which led to the hampering
of the long-running search for their
daughter. Kate and Gerry McCann were
quick to refute the claims, and demanded
a detailed apology from the Sunday
Times, which was printed in December.
Nevertheless, the couple’s libel action
maintained that the Sunday Times article
had caused them to suffer “serious
damage to their reputations and severe
embarrassment and distress”. |
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