Green MSPPage wins £750k libel battle over wildcats
Defamation case is thrown out
A WILDCAT conservation firm has failed in its £750,000 defamation case against a Green MSP.
Wildcat Haven Enterprises (WHE) brought the action against Andy Wightman, claiming it had suffered loss and damage after he published allegations online.
The Lothian MSP claimed the company was a ‘tax-dodging scam’ which funnelled donations into bank accounts in the Channel Islands.
At the Court of Session in Edinburgh yesterday, Judge Lord Clark said Mr Wightman’s blog post contained an ‘important factual inaccuracy’, and the firm was ‘a genuine scheme aimed at the conservation of wildcats’.
But, rejecting the defamation claim, he said: ‘A number of the defamatory imputations founded upon by the pursuer (WHE) are not the meanings which the ordinary reasonable reader would have taken from the relevant material and so those claims cannot succeed.’
In his first blog, published in September 2015 under the headline ‘Wildcat Haven, Bumblebee Haven or Tax Haven?’, Mr Wightman wrote that the company was supported by Alderneybased HTL and Volkswagen. He described it as ‘a tax-dodging scam designed to con the public out of money and then funnelling money donated to wildcats to the Channel Islands, to line the pockets of corporate fat cats and the aristocratic gentry’.
Director Paul O’Donoghue told the court the claims were ‘deeply upsetting’, adding: ‘The allegations that my wife and I take any money from Wildcat Enterprises for our personal gains sicken me to the stomach.’
WHE sells ‘souvenir plots’ of land to members of the public to help raise money.
The buyers, Mr O’Donoghue has said, have personal right over the plots of land but cannot register them. WHE has said the sale of plots is a marketing device that lets supporters donate in ‘a novel, imaginative and light-hearted way’.
Mr Wightman contended that the blogs represented his honest comment on matters of public interest. Lord Clark said Mr Wightman had made four untrue statements in the material.
But the judge added: ‘The fact that the defender has made certain statements which are untrue does not itself mean that the defamatory allegations complained of the pursuer were made. For
‘Matters of public interest’
the defence of fair comment to be available, it is not necessary that every fact founded upon is true.’ He added: ‘In applying the standard of responsible journalism in a practical and flexible manner, I nonetheless conclude that the blogs do not meet that test. ‘On the information available to me, the pursuer is a small company engaged in a genuine scheme aimed at the conservation of wildcats, run by well-intentioned and enthusiastic individuals. This must have been apparent to the defender, at least as a serious possibility. ‘The scheme was still seeking to get off the ground around the time of blog one, as the defender was fully aware.’ WHE had claimed an opportunity to buy an area of forest fell through following the publication of the material.