NEWSFLASH: BCA surrenders, Simon Singh wins libel case by default

[major_clanger]

The British Chiropractic Association has discontinued its libel case against Simon Singh, following the devastating criticism handed down by the Court of Appeal earlier this month.

NB: Doing this (i.e. saying "sorry, I want to stop suing you now") typically involves undertaking to pay all the other side's costs to date.

Comments

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

I actually think some of his decisions were correct. That in the Max Mosley looks sensible, as does that in the Google libel case.

[liadnan]

I think that quite a lot of his decisions were correct, the Moseley one being a prime example. I'm also wildly unconvinced that we need substantial changes to the law of libel, save in the field of costs (which is underway anyway) and in particular disagree with large parts of the PEN report. I used to think that the burden of proof should be reversed, which is one of their points, but the Murat case changed my mind on that (should it really have been for him to prove that he was *not* a paedophile?).

His decision on the preliminary issue in this case was in my view clearly wrong as a matter of law(though it's fair to say a lot of lawyers did take a different view) but the court of appeal sorted that out, which is kind of what it's for.