Ex-wife fights Facebook ‘strangling’ defamation
A WIFE who claimed on Facebook that her ex-husband tried to strangle her will today fight a judge’s ruling that she is guilty of defamation because he was not attempting to kill her.
Nicola Stocker, 51, will argue before the Supreme Court that she had used common language to describe the attack by Ronald Stocker, her millionaire ex-husband, for which he was arrested, when talking to his new lover.
At the original High Court trial, Mr Justice Mitting used the Oxford English Dictionary to define strangling and decide that she had implied Mr Stocker, 68, was trying to kill her when his intention when he put his hand round her neck was “to silence, not to kill”.
It comes amid warnings that wealthy men are increasingly using long, expensive court cases to silence women who make allegations against them.
Addressing a public meeting organised by the Centre for Women’s Justice ahead of the case, Ms Stocker said: “I find it incredibly sad that a legal system I held in such high regard in its current format enables men, and I am sure women, with enough wealth behind them to do that.
“I hope that Parliament will sit up and listen and one day make the changes so clearly needed.”
After 13 years of marriage the Stockers went through an acrimonious divorce in 2012.
In December of that year she commented on a Facebook post by Deborah Bligh, Mr Stocker’s new girlfriend.
She stated that he “tried to strangle me” and had been arrested a number of times including over some “gun issues”, threats and a breach of a nonmolestation order.
Following the original trial in 2016 Mr Justice Mitting noted that the dictionary defined strangling either as killing someone by compressing their throat or to “constrict painfully” the throat. The judge ruled that she could not have intended the second definition as she said that he had “tried” to strangle her and police who were called after the incident in March 2003 “had found handprints on her neck”.
Therefore, he ruled that the use of the word “trying” meant she was referring to the first definition and implying he was trying to kill her.
Mr Justice Mitting noted that Mr Stocker “did commit an offence against her on March 23 2003, at least common assault. He was arrested three times. There were ‘gun issues’. He had made threats, though not of immediate violence against her. But she has not met the sting of the postings that the claimant was a dangerous man.”
In defamation cases the legal responsibility for proving the truth of what has been said lies with the person who published it.
Ms Stocker, who has had to fight breast cancer during a difficult legal battle, lost an appeal against the ruling at the Court of Appeal last year and is currently facing a bill for Mr Stocker’s costs in excess of £200,000.
She will today take her case to the Supreme Court where it will be decided whether the “judge erred in determining the meaning of the words complained of ”.