I Was Threatened With a Lawsuit

uh as it says I was threatened with a defamation lawsuit and all I thought was a t-shirt that's a lie I didn't even get a t-shirt it was the most expensive not a t-shirt I've ever had big big disclaimer I want to be extremely clear about this no confusion I am not a lawyer this is not legal advice do not take this as legal advice everyone got that anyone conf anyone still think I might be a lawyer I've got more style but uh names have been removed to protect the innocent as you'd expect and of course the guilty and yes I have sickers you can have them after the talk so how it went once upon a time

James here was sitting on the internet browsing away as you do sorry for legal reasons I cannot name the person who was browsing the internet as he they were fairly levelheaded and conscientious and they care about people making aggravated claims online they may have ranted about it more than once or twice and they browse a particular social network and then someone was wrong on the internet quite a familiar situation I'm guessing uh as we all know most people are wrong on the internet most of the time except me in this case it was an annoying sort it was claims about something they had done which were aized they were being evidently criticized so every criticism

was carefully evidenced they were lying in a way that could cause harm which tends to upset our unnamed protagonist so our protagonist posts about this and says a few things and posts on an unnamed professional social network makes a few comments forgets about the whole thing this is not a uncommon occurrence it doesn't stick in your memory went on their way not thinking about the situation until bang suddenly a few months later our hero has completely forgotten about this incident utterly out of their mind and a message arrived from a legal firm looking very odd looks like spam just like your standard fishing attack attachment no real names mentioned very vague details checks up on the legal firm goes

back to them and says you know I think you may have a compromised email account here uh I can just walk you through what's happened and maybe help out gets a reply from the legal firm saying no it's genuine you can read the attachment we will send one by the post if necessary so open the attachment in a sandbox just in case yeah it's definitely a letter found the phone number of the legal firm again found the phone number of the appropriate lawyer there called them what's this about right well this is a pre-action letter as in if you do not take the actions we've said we are going to sue you for defamation the things that our hero

would have to do would be I've got a list here so I don't forget moove their original post okay publish a prominent apology recanting every claim made in the original post promise to never make any defamatory statements ever again I mean that's a problem for our hero make a statement in open court apologizing for all the alleged wrongdoing now that involves going into open court making an admission of guilt of death and a formal apology that will be on court records forever pay substantial damages they didn't name the damages or give a number but substantial was described and pale legal costs if they fail to do those things there will be legal proceedings for liel now getting personal if you've

never received a threat like this it is difficult to understand the impact it can have in Our Hero's case it felt like being punched in the gut it was sickening there was nausea there was Panic cold sweats genuinely visceral reaction this felt like a physical attack it is a panic reaction that was the first reaction the second one was pure unadulterated rage incident slap there is not misspelled slap stands for strategic litigation or strategic lawsuit against public participation we'll go into a bit more of that slaps there's a coalition a group called case Coalition against slacks in Europe they work to prevent these from being used they are mainly used by politicians to trans silence journalists

officially speaking strangely politicians seem to take little proactive action to minimize their usage I cannot imagine why that might be the high-profile C he says are the ones against journalists activists and similar there are civil cases there are a lot of civil cases that never make headlines now in the statistics and again I'm sorry I'm going to read case says there are or were 820 cases in 2023 those are the ones that are high enough profile to hit that bar I know that of the particular case that targeted our hero there were at least six other people targeted by that same one these are used a lot and they don't get spoken about our own government described them

as fundamentally undermining speech free speech and the rule of law but MPS may or may not use them as has been publicly documented so it's very little help case try to act against them but they don't give support to people targeted by them if you're a journalist you will have a media company backing you they have very expensive lawyers good for them if you're not you probably don't have very expensive lawyers who here has a full expensive legal firm on retainer at all times I was actually expecting some of you to have that okay a slap by the way is a sign that you are annoying the right type of person so this was of course when our

hero being sens spell at all times leaps into action contacts his legal firm and immediately responds to and deals with the case not quite it's not going to be that smooth and simple as I said the first reaction was Panic the second was rage then it was a confusing mess of the two for several days completely unbalanced completely thrown off unable to concentrate on things this is a serious legal threat fortunately our hero has some legal people who are counted as friends and may owe favors for previous thoughts or be willing to talk because he bought them a point once so reaches out to the these people who all say yeah it's a nonsense case but you have to take it

seriously great well that's really useful how much would it be for you to take it seriously for me well to bring in my insurance uh because of my particular position to bring in The Firm that would be £3,000 for the initial consultation and then maybe a few more to write the letter very nice people but they do have to charge to bring in their insurance to bring in their professional Indemnity remember those two words and to actually engage the full legal framework they need to another note the willingness of both some legal firms and some individuals to put people through this because their feelings are hurt by Honest criticism should tell you a lot about those

people also remember flippant humor is a defense against trauma and negative experiences so you will know innocent until proven guilty does that always apply anyone tell me one of the cases where it doesn't apply there's a clue in the whole talk here not necessarily civil sorry as innocent guilty not proven in Scotland I don't care about Scotland that's their problem I'm guessing it's defamation it's defamation in a defamation case it's interesting arguably innocent until proven guilty applies innocent of the grieved party they are assumed to be telling the truth about their damages and about the fact that you the defendant are lying about them you must prove that you have a defense otherwise you are assumed to be guilty and must

pay damages and do everything else again I am not a lawyer this is not legal advice this is potentially useful information that you can then talk about with a lawyer should it become relevant so truth justice and the American way the four defenses against defamation Defense number one truth this is true I can prove it is true there is no doubt I can absolutely prove this look here are the receipts here's the evidence great absolute defense case ends there once it's got to court secondly reasonable opinion or honest opinion I believed it was true because every shred of evidence I had at the time showed me it was and any other reasonable person would believe the same

again it's a defense once you get to court we have it was a publication in the public interest guess which one journalists tend to use guess which one isn't really available if it's not a major publication with a major public audience and finally uh I'm a politician I was in the House of Commons I'm allowed to say what I want and no one can do anything anything about it parliamentary privilege of course we're not allowed to call them lies free speech for all yeah there is also qualified privilege now that's in particular cases it's really wibbly talk to a lawyer so this was advice I did receive sorry our hero received from a lawyer if

you go to court no matter how strong your case no matter how much you can prove no matter how much work you've put in no matter how committed you are you can always always lose and if you lose it's going to hurt and more importantly getting it to court takes time and money and a lot of both and it's also all on the person making the claim of defamation they can choose to abandon it at any moment meaning all of your is wasted now fortunately our hero was lucky enough to have the previously mentioned contacts in various legal firms who were friendly and helpful and said yes I will charge this much money for it if you want to do it even more

fortunately before going on the immediate knee-jerk or the second knee-jerk rage reaction and posting about it and splashing it everywhere he reached out to them and spoke to them and they said first of all do not antagonize these people until you're ready to which is very good advice so if you're in this situation don't kneejerk start shouting about it it is tempting particularly if you know that you're in the right if you do that it's not going to help your case so what do you do well remember these letters come from law firms uh bottom feeding firms the type of ones who pursue frivolous cop copyright infringement claims and defamation claims you will find law firms that

specialize in these I am sure some of them are good I'm sure some are and that's about it that's where you get to with the legal advice that you can get for a p of beer so it's always preferable not to go to court it's always preferable not to publish too much about it certainly with specifics that could be traced back to the case later on so what do you do well you could go private you could go and hire a lawyer that is a representation of the money involved there if you work for a large company with a large legal defense fund that may be an option it's probably not the option they'll use but it may be

one if you're a billionaire definitely an option but they are expensive and frankly if you're wealthy enough to go and engage a private Law Firm to defend you without blinking and without selling your house you're probably not going to be in this position because every time you go on the internet three lawyers are standing behind you saying don't post that so for everyone else if you've got to choose between paying rent or being sued what do you do insurance and there's two options we have personal insurance your home insurance your life insurance and we have Professional Insurance so what capacity were you acting in when you made the allegedly defamatory claim was it a professional

comment or was it a personal comment insurance companies are your friends I'm sorry to say it they really are and whichever way you go whether you try to claim on your personal insurance or your Professional Insurance they are going to ask you to prove that you are acting in that capacity keep receipts keep evidence if for example it was on an unnamed social media Network for professionals be able to prove that your activity on that network is directly tied to your insured business because if you can't you're acting in a personal capacity and most of us do not have the appropriate Personal Insurance we'll get to that but if you're in a professional cap there words professional capacity

yes better if you work for a company any company if you work for someone else can pretty much guarantee they will have professional Indemnity insurance if you are acting in Your Capacity as a professional of that company you will be covered if you are independent or own your own company like our hero get professional indemnity Insurance have it make sure it covers you defamation is included by default in most policies but get the insurance doesn't cost much and you'll see why it's well you know why it's worthwhile £3,000 just to talk for a bit and then more for a letter I'm just going to repeat that get professional Indemnity insurance yes you may get bored of hearing that

if it's personal your personal liability cover on your home insurance does not cover defamation you want personal injury that will cover you for defending against defamation or Prosecuting it and that is not included by default so check your policy if you're going to go around slandering people

if anyone wants to screenshot that just so you remember it get professional Indemnity insurance particularly if you're going to go around poking Bears so as long as you've got the insurance it is actually quite simple first thing you do notify your insurer of a claim tell them someone's threatening to sue me I've got no idea what's going on please help they will then immediately come back with and say well were you acting in a capacity that's covered by our insurance now to be absolutely clear this is not the person processing your claim trying to refute it this is something they have to do so if you're going to your professional Indemnity make sure you can say yes I was posting

it on this unnamed social network for professional activities in my professional capacity as a corporate truth teller and someone who for my own professional reputation must call out charlatans and conmen online or possibly con women I don't want to give away identifying information that might come back to haunt me so notify your insurer of a claim know how to do that it's usually just an email step two follow the system once your insurer has accepted the claim which might take a few days they will very quickly genuinely very quickly within about 20 for hours in this case assemble a crack legal team who are experienced in dealing with exactly this on your behalf and tell you what your

excess is just in case you forgot talk to the legal team the legal team are on your side literally they're paid to be on your side and they don't want to go to court because they could always lose they want to settle it out of court they want to deal with it quietly now there's a whole process with defamation where you get the letter you can go to mediation you can try and settle outside of Court eventually you get to court by then the house is sold the dog has been sold you know you're rapidly running out of funds and everything's gone horribly wrong so don't do that talk to the legal team tell them this is why I think it's

irrelevant what can we do step three they write a letter now that should be a slightly smaller bag of money they write a letter they send the letter they say you probably won't hear back here's the bill if it's professional Indemnity by the way you will be paying not only your excess but the entirety of the vat for the bill which if your vat registered is reclaimable there are advantages to vat registration despite the paperwork headache and honestly that's it this is genuinely where this story ends the letter is sent and you never hear anything else

defamation law has a statute of limitations of one year poking people before that has expired can have consequences one year watch this space uh thank you I've been absolutely great buy my book it's really good thank you James and remember get professional Indemnity insurance