The perils of Twitter, even where tweets are swiftly deleted, has come into sharp focus in the High Court’s ruling on the libellous spat between food blogger Jack Monroe and controversial columnist Katie Hopkins.
Monroe was awarded £24,000 plus costs in the case, Monroe v Hopkins [2017] EWHC 433 (QB). However, Mr Justice Warby also ordered Hopkins to pay an initial £107,000 towards Monroe’s legal costs within 28 days. Hopkins’ total spend on the case may be as high as £300,000.
Rupert Earle, partner at Bates Wells Braithwaite, said: “The judge placed great importance on the impact social media posts can have, even if tweets are deleted fairly soon afterwards.
“Unless one is leader of the free world, it is perhaps best to approach Twitter with caution.”
Earle said the case demonstrated that a tweet can be defamatory, even if only sent initially to 140 followers and deleted with two and a half hours. It can re-tweeted, viewed on a home page and picked up in mainstream media.
Hopkins erroneously tweeted that Monroe approved of the vandalism of war memorials, after mistaking her for the journalist, Laurie Penny, who had expressed support for the vandalism. Monroe, who comes from a military family, responded with an angry denial. Monroe said she would sue but offered to settle for a £5,000 donation to her chosen charity, Migrant Rescue. Hopkins, who has previously expressed controversial views on migrant issues, did not take up the offer. Hopkins later deleted the first tweet but also tweeted a derogatory statement comparing Penny and Monroe.
Warby J held that the tweets had caused Monroe “real and substantial distress”. He said the second tweet, by implication, suggested that Monroe also condoned the vandalism.
He examined the “principles applied to Twitter”, including that a tweet that is said to be libellous may need to be read as part of a series of tweets forming part of a “multi-dimensional conversation”.
Rather than engaging in “elaborate analysis” of a 140-character tweet, the courts should adopt an “impressionistic approach” that takes into account “the whole tweet and the context in which the ordinary reasonable reader would read that tweet”.
Warby J also pointed out the difficulties of disclosure in Twitter cases—the first tweet was deleted, which meant the Twitter Analytics were not available, and Monroe’s Twitter records were deleted. He said: “This highlights in the Twitter context the responsibility of a litigant to retain and preserve material that may become disclosable, and the responsibility of a solicitor to take reasonable steps to ensure that the client appreciates this responsibility and performs it.”
Mark Lewis, partner at Seddons, who acted for Monroe, said: “The price of not saying sorry has been very high.
“Hopkins has had to pay out of her own pocket a six-figure sum in damages and costs for a tweet that should have been deleted within minutes as soon as she was told it was wrong.”
The judgment includes a Schedule on “How Twitter works”.
