A multi-disciplinary law firm is suing a trade publication for libel over an article suggesting that it failed to act honestly and transparently towards clients.
It emerged this week in Direct Accidents Management Ltd & Anor v Newsquest Specialist Media Ltd that Bond Turner is one of two claimants involved in the action following the publication of two articles on the website of Insurance Times.
The two articles, published in December 2019 and January 2020, reflected on a case where a driver ran up £400,000 worth of credit hire charges while her car was being repaired. The credit hire firm involved was Direct Accident Management, which is owned by Anexo Group, the listed company that owns Bond Turner. The claimants are seeking damages, an injunction and related relief for defamation.
In a preliminary ruling on meaning, Mrs Justice Tipples DBE found that the articles alleged DAM to be guilty of fraud in relating to charging ‘exaggerated and grossly excessive’ credit hire costs to its customers. This conduct, according to the articles, dated back to 2013.
The judge also found that the articles, read in their proper context, had suggested there were reasonable grounds to suspect that Bond Turner failed to act honestly and transparently in respect of introductions and referrals from DAM.
The claimants pointed out that the first thing the reader could see at the top of the first article was a picture of sharks swimming in murky waters, coupled with the headline ‘Credit hire sharks circle as market reacts to excessive costs’.
It was complained of that the article suggested that credit hire organisations such as DAM acted in an ‘unscrupulous predatory manner’ with a degree of dishonesty.
The second article said it was an investigation into the ‘year’s most notorious credit hire case’. The judge found that the reader was told that DAM was a ‘rogue operator’ and had been called a ‘real bunch of cowboys’.
On the relationship between DAM and Bond Turner, the law firm was said to be part of the same group and the reasonable reader, the judge concluded, would understand there was a potential conflict of interest.
She rejected the argument from the defendant that the firm’s role would be understood as being ‘more peripheral’, given that Bond Turner was part of the same group and acted for the claimant in the case.
The judge said the meaning of both articles was defamatory of DAM and Bond Turner at common law. She stressed that the judgment related only to the meaning of the two articles and that the defendant had not yet been required to file a defence. Specifically, the court was not required at this stage to decide whether allegations made in the articles were true.
