Tuesday, December 19, 2023
Using the courts to silence criticism
The European documents the threats that were made to them to try and prevent the publication of reports on the how Mone and her billionaire husband, Doug Barrowman, had profiteered to the tune of more than £60m from the Covid pandemic.
They say that a significant number of journalists in the UK were on the receiving end of Mone’s attempts to shut them up by lying about their involvement with PPE Medpro and that lawyers acting for her targeted many journalists, not least the Guardian’s David Conn, who led the way with the story:
But the bizarre chain of legal threats she made to the New European of action for defamation over our front page headlined “Stop This Boat” gives an insight into the raw arrogance, duplicity and spectacular amateurism Mone has demonstrated.
After receiving her pre-action letter, it quickly became clear to us that either Mone was being given legal advice by an amateur or – incredibly – that the threats were in fact emanating from Mone herself, under the guise of her “in-house legal team”.
On August 23 this year, the day after we published our Stop This Boat front page, an email claiming to be “from the office of Baroness Mone” – but sent from what was very clearly her own personal email address – demanded we delete our stories about her online, withdraw all copies of the printed newspaper, apologise and pay damages to a charity of her choice.
Since the email address was “Michelle@…..” it was assumed it was Mone herself emailing. Yet when we replied telling her we would not comply with her demands, and demanding disclosure of documents demonstrating the true ownership of the Lady M yacht, the response (again from her “Michelle@…” email) insisted it was not Michelle Mone but “Baroness Mone’s family office”.
When asked if the entire office had access to her personal email, the author – who refused to be identified – insisted that replies were sent by Mone’s “in-house legal team”, who had access to her email.
Thinking this implausible, we asked for the “in-house legal team” to identify themselves. The “Michelle@….” email responded: “We don’t have to disclose the team in this office.”
After we again demanded evidence of the true ownership of the Lady M, the, ahem, “in-house legal team” replied with the kind of brevity alien to practising lawyers: “Your publication is 100% wrong about this and you will rectify.” We chose not to.
Certainly, it was telling that the threats had not come from an actual firm of solicitors (as other, earlier, legal threats including to the Guardian had). By that time, we suspected that the lies being told by Mone and Barrowman had become clear to anyone closely involved with the matter. Any solicitor continuing to knowingly represent them in intimidating the media with lies would face being struck off.
These tactics are used again and again by well-off public figures to try and control the way they are reported in the media. Fortunately, in this case, the journalists involved were not intimidated.
The fact that many millionaires do get away with it indicates to me that there needs to be some legal protection for journalists in the future.
