In a recent summary judgment handed down by the High Court, it was held that libel and breach of privacy claims brought by the mother of Olympic Champion boxer Nicola Adams OBE against Amazon for the documentary about her daughter’s life, Lioness, the Nicola Adams story, were either true or constituted honest opinion and that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding the information disclosed.
The judgment provides insight into how the court:
- Applies the defence of honest opinion in defamation claims; and
- Balances the competing rights of privacy and freedom of expression.
Background
Lioness, the Nicola Adams story documented the boxer’s extraordinary life from her childhood in a Leeds council estate to becoming the first woman to win an Olympic Gold Medal for boxing in London 2012. The documentary contained scenes which touched on the strained relationship between Adams and her mother, Denver Dorsetra Adams (or “Dee” as she is referred in the judgment), including allegations of threatening messages and childhood experiences of domestic violence.
Dee brought a claim against Amazon, contending that the allegations in the documentary that she had sent abusive and threatening messages to Nicola, in turn ruining their relationship, were defamatory and lacked factual basis. Separately, that references to Nicola’s childhood experiences of domestic violence both with her father and a subsequent partner of Dee’s were a misuse of her personal information.
Amazon made an application for summary judgment on the grounds that neither claim had any prospects of success as:
- The allegedly libellous statements were arguably true and/or reflected honest opinion; and
- The allegedly private information was not private, and publication of the documentary was clearly not a misuse of private information (“MOPI”) in light of Nicola’s right to talk about her own life, the public interest in her own life and the fact the material was already and would continue to be widely published.
The High Court agreed with Amazon that Dee’s claims had little prospect of success and were therefore dismissed.
The High Court’s Decision on the Libel claim:
1. Defence of truth
Dee disputed that the abusive messages were the primary cause of the breakdown in her relationship with Adams. Instead, she attributed the breakdown to a dispute involving Adams’s brother, to which the text messages were a justified response. Dee’s legal team argued that the defence of truth could not apply where the matters that caused the breakdown in relations were alternative factors, rather than the text messages themselves.
Amazon successfully argued the defence of truth in Section 2 of the Defamation Act 2013 (“the Act”). Specifically, that the ‘essential core’ and crux of the defamatory sting of the libel was the admitted fact that Dee had sent the abusive messages to Nicola.
Drawing on case law such as Bokova v Associated Newspapers Ltd [2018] EWHC 2032 (QB) and Turcu v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2005] EWHC 799 (QB), the court emphasised that the truth defence does not require literal truth but focuses on the “essential core” of the libel itself. The court found that any arguments as to the underlying cause of the family breakdown were completely irrelevant to the defence of truth and destined to fail.
Interestingly, the judge commented that to litigate over the breakdown of family relations would only lead to further sharing of private family details which is at odds with the claim for MOPI.
2. Defence of honest opinion
Dee argued that Amazon had to prove that Adams suffered abuse at the hands of her father when she was a child for the defence of honest opinion to succeed. Adams’s legal team argued that the sting of the opinion is the text messages were abusive and there were undisputed facts to support an honest person viewing the messages as being abuse in a different form.
Under Section 3 of the Act, a defence of honest opinion can only be defeated if either (a) it can be shown that the defendant did not hold that opinion or (b) in the instances where the statement complained of was published by the defendant (in this case, Amazon) but made by another person (here – Adams) it is defeated if it can be shown that Amazon knew or ought to have know that Nicola did not hold that opinion.
It was put to the judge that “someone might hold the opinion that the earth is flat without the requirement that it be true”, to explain why Amazon need not prove the full factual basis of Adams’s honest opinion.
The court agreed with Amazon’s argument, noting that while the level of abuse Nicola suffered from her father might be disputed, there was enough evidence to support Nicola’s opinion that the text messages were a form of abuse. It was enough for Amazon to show that an honest person could hold the opinion based on the available facts which resulted in the court finding that Dee had no real prospect of defeating the honest opinion defence.
The High Court’s Decision on the misuse of private information claim:
Dee made a separate claim over six items of private information disclosed in the documentary. These fell into three categories (1) information regarding Adams’s upbringing, (2) information about Adams’s experiences of domestic violence as a child; and (3) information about the recent text messages sent by Dee.
The court was asked to consider:
- The extent to which there was a reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to the information that was already in the public domain; and
- The extent to which Article 8 (Right to Privacy) and Article 10 (Freedom of Expression) of the European Convention of Human Rights (“ECHR”) of Adams outweighed any Article 8 rights of Dee.
In assessing Dee’s right to privacy, the court took account of the ‘Murray factors’ as derived from Murray v Express Newspapers plc [2009] Ch 481 including; the attributes of the Claimant, the nature of the activity the Claimant was engaged in, the location, the nature and purpose of the intrusion, whether consent was given or inferred, the effect on the Claimant and how the information came to be published. The court found that much of the information (particularly about Adams’s childhood and domestic abuse) had already been widely shared through her autobiography and public interviews and therefore determined that Dee did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding these details, as they were already in the public domain.
In making its decision, the court also considered how Dee’s right to privacy under Article 8 of the ECHR weighed against Amazon’s Article 10 rights in providing an opportunity for Adams to tell her story, including her account of her childhood.
The court described Adams’s story as an “inspiration for girls and women and her story clearly contributes to the general debates about societal shifts”. As such, it was deemed to be in the public interest to share the story, with the Article 10 right to freedom and expression outweighing Dee’s Article 8 privacy rights. It seemed clear that the underlying reason for the MOPI claim was Dee’s concern about damage to her reputation and the family rift rather than a desire for privacy in relation to the information that was already in the public domain.
Key takeaways
The decision affirmed three key principles underpinning defamation and MOPI claims:
- Truth triumphs – even if ancillary elements are disputed, the truth of a statement’s core meaning can defeat a defamation claim.
- Public domain – information already shared with the public significantly reduces the expectation of privacy.
- Story telling – the expression of telling your own life story, especially when in the public interest, can take precedence over competing privacy claims.
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