Does Holla Back appreciate the difference between UK and US libel laws? Possibly not, says Mark Stephens

The exhortation to 'Holla Back at street harassers' (or 'sex pests' as they are more commonly called in our red-top tabloid press) has been embraced with alacrity by New York's women. Holla Back UK, which has just opened here, is similarly targeting perverts.


However laudable the dual aims of exposing miscreants and empowering victims of anti-social behaviour, one is given pause to wonder aloud: just how long it will be before this site provokes its first blog libel suit? I can already hear the ambulances revving up in the offices of the claimant's libel lawyers, ready to clean the stain from the innocent and give succour to the misidentified.


The libel courts are not the best forum for resolving the issue of anti-social behaviour. We have seen some very unhappy outcomes, such as the woman who alleged she was date-raped and abused in a relationship. It should be said in fairness that the accused denied the allegations. The jury could not decide whom to believe, so there was a hung jury and the prospect of a retrial.


That said, for many years a seedy corner of the libel industry has been dedicated to rectifying wrongs perpetrated by spurned lovers, who have sent intimate snaps taken in happier times - when there was an assumption there would be no unhappy times - to explicit adult magazines as a rather mean form of revenge. It does not take a doctorate in human behaviour to realise that the Holla Back blog is susceptible to similarly malicious uses.


The publishers of this site have perhaps yet to acknowledge the difference between UK and US libel law. In the US, with its guarantees of free speech under the Bill of Rights and various state constitutions, it is almost impossible to bring suit successfully unless there is something deliberately or recklessly false in what was posted.


In the UK, the tables are somewhat turned by our peculiarly claimant-friendly libel laws. These are libel laws that already bring our courts into disrepute by attracting crooks, brigands and libel tourists - let's hope this will not include perverts too.


Mark Stephens is a partner at London firm Finers Stephens Innocent