Letters to the editor

Working for a legal publication in plain sight is its own occupational hazard. The Gazette is no stranger to lawyers’ letters taking exception to a story on behalf of affronted clients and demanding condign recompense. Such letters often combine pomposity with sanctimony, clearly intending to browbeat the recipient (usually me).

Perhaps their authors are paid per colourful epithet. I wonder, too, whether some media lawyers are frustrated writers, so exquisitely crafted are their broadsides.

One well-known media firm used to send their letters by fax – long after the fax machine became a museum piece. Did they hope we would miss the letter, thereby compounding our alleged felony by prolonging the life of the offending article? My fault, I suppose, for forgetting to ditch the office fax machine sooner.

On reflection, more than one of these letters could be described as a strategic lawsuit against public participation. The facts were out there and more or less established. The principal object was to deter, frustrate and obfuscate by tying up the magazine’s time and resources.

Fortunately for me, the Law Society has excellent legal advisers. We have the wherewithal and appetite to defend ourselves – and do so, vigorously. Very often, investigative journalists and authors cannot.

Professionally, therefore, I support the curbs on SLAPPs contemplated in the Gazette this week by justice minister James Cartlidge MP. At least in principle. In practice, the issue is more complicated than keenly supportive national newspapers would have their readers believe.

As my colleague Sam Tobin wrote recently, the consensus among anti-SLAPP campaigners would seem to be ‘I know a SLAPP when I see one’. That is not much use as a filter for litigation.

Moreover, grotesque inequality of arms does not a SLAPP make. The super-rich are people too and not all of them are Russian oligarchs. If they can afford expensive legal representation when their opponent cannot, that is surely a characteristic of a misfiring civil justice system rather than (necessarily) evidence of malicious intent.

There is clearly work to do to get to a workable set of proposals. To the minister’s credit, the wide-ranging nature of his consultation is an acknowledgement of this.