Chat room insults lead to internet libel victory
By Adam Sherwin, Media Correspondent
A WOMAN who posted false sexual allegations against a UKIP parliamentary candidate on the internet has become the first person in a British chat room to be successfully sued for libel.
Tracy Williams was ordered yesterday to pay £10,000 damages to Michael Keith Smith and issued with a High Court restraining order banning her from abusing him further on any website.
Mr Keith Smith, 53, who fought the Portsmouth North seat last year, was falsely accused of being a sex offender and “racist bigot” in an internet chatroom. He sued Williams, claiming that she had used an alias to make serious and false accusations against him on a group discussion website in April 2004.
In a potentially significant ruling for public figures fighting libellous websites, Judge Alistair MacDuff, QC, said: “The published statements, upon which reliance is placed, are clearly seriously defamatory. These statements have been made to a restricted audience and it is likely that few people have read these statements. But they were available to the whole world, or at least to the part of the world that has access to a computer and knows how to go on the internet.”
Mr Keith Smith, a chartered surveyor and former Conservative Party member from Fareham, Hampshire, said that Williams had attacked him in the chatroom for right-wing political discussion after they had disagreed in a group debate about the Iraq war.
The abuse started after Mr Keith Smith signed up in 2003 to a discussion site that had 100 or so members and which was hosted by Yahoo. Although he used the name MikeUKPO53EX, the other debaters logging into the chatroom could discover his profile by clicking on that user name.
He told the judge: “The whole thing got out of hand when the Iraq war started. I took the view that the war was wrong and she was very strongly in favour of Mr Bush and the war.”
In 2003 Williams, using the pseudonym “Gos” or “Gosforth”, began her campaign of abuse against Mr Keith Smith, calling him a “lard brain”, a “nonce”, a Nazi, and accusing him of sexually harassing a female co-worker. When he sought to discover her identity and begin court proceedings she continued the abuse, calling him a “racist bigot” and “maggot”.
The judge said: “She was cocking a snook at the court and solicitors and she had no intention of stopping her libellous and defamatory behaviour.” She indicated that she would set up a new website and Mr Keith Smith was concerned that she would repeat the statements.
Be careful what you say or I'll sue you!
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