Day 312 - 11 Dec 96 - Page 27
1 Although they use strong terms, the language was not
2 excessive. Finally, the applicant's conviction was capable
3 of discouraging open discussion of matters of public
4 concern. The interference was not, therefore,
5 proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued, and obviously
6 this would apply. Bearing in mind that this
7 Mr. Thorgeirson was fined for criminal defamation -- I do
8 not know what, there is the amount given of the fine on the
9 front page but I do not know what the conversion rate is
10 for Icelandic Kroner, but I think we can safely assume that
11 the fine would have been substantially less than the
12 damages that the Plaintiffs are seeking in this case, and
13 therefore it must apply that if the damages claimed by the
14 Plaintiffs are awarded to them that that would be an
15 interference which was not proportionate to the legitimate
16 aim being pursued, and not just against us but also under
17 the terms of deterring other people from feeling able to
18 make criticisms of McDonald's and other multi-nationals.
19
20 The interference is not solely the money, it is also all
21 the implications for freedom of speech and... Just, I
22 mean, knowing that a libel case is going to take even, you
23 know, a month would deter most people from fighting the
24 case because they would not be able to take time off work
25 to do so. So therefore anybody who does not have the
26 financial resources to pay for a lawyer, or in any event,
27 would be deterred from criticising any such multi-national.
28
29 Starting on page 862 is the section 2, alleged violations
30 of article 10. I do not want to read anything out on that
31 page, but on page 866.
32
33 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
34
35 MR. MORRIS: Actually --
36
37 MS. STEEL: I do not know whether I have said the date of the
38 case, but it is 1992. So that is quite recent. On
39 page 866, starting at the second paragraph, this says that
40 in short the applicant was essentially reporting what was
41 being said by others about police brutality. He was
42 convicted by the Reykjavik criminal courts of an offence of
43 the penal code partly because of the failure to justify
44 what it considered to be his own allegations, namely that
45 unspecified members of the Reykjavik police had committed a
46 number of acts, a serious assault, resulting in disablement
47 of their victims as well as forgery and other criminal
48 offences.
49
50 In so far as the applicant was required to establish a
51 truth of his statements he was, in the court's opinion,
52 faced with an unreasonable if not impossible task.
53 Obviously, that is applicable to our case, particularly
54 given the wide ranging number of statements that we have
55 had to justify, but obviously the fact that they were not
56 our criticisms, they were not our statements, they were
57 all... Firstly, they were not even London Greenpeace
58 statements, they were collated by London Greenpeace into
59 one document, but secondly it is accepted that I was not
60 the author of the leaflet, and we consider that there is no
