A public consultation regarding Section 40 of the United Kingdom’s Crime and Courts Act of 2013 was completed last week.  The highly contentious law was created in response to a legal inquiry that recommended judicial and other legal remedies should be made more readily available to members of the general public.  Under Section 40, low-cost arbitration proceedings would be offered to libel claimants through a government-approved press regulator such as IMPRESS or via the Independent Press Standards Organisation (“IPSO”).  Although Section 40 was previously approved, the law has not yet been implemented.

In a government submission, Alastair Brett, a British media attorney and former legal manager at the Times and Sunday Times, reportedly proposed that all libel disputes filed against a UK publisher be decided using fast-track arbitration performed by an independent organization instead of a regulator.  According to Brett, implementing Section 40 as written would unnecessarily penalize newspapers that choose not to become affiliated with a regulator due to free press concerns by forcing the publisher to pay additional court costs in a libel action regardless of the outcome.

Instead of utilizing a more limited arbitration scheme such as the pilot program currently operated by IPSO, Brett argued in his submission that fast-track arbitration is the most effective way to hold not only newspapers, but all publishers who place information into the public domain, accountable to libel claimants.

 

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