Carter-Ruck

Carter-Ruck acted for the Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky in a number of libel and other actions, including in the House of Lords against Forbes magazine,[12] The Guardian[13] and Russian state-owned broadcaster VGTRK.[14]

Carter-Ruck acted for Richard Burgon MP who in February 2019 was awarded damages of £30,000 in the High Court for libel. The [which ?] paper is expected to pay his legal costs, and an injunction was issued preventing the false statements from being published again. The article in question made a false allegation that Burgon had joined a band which delighted in using Nazi symbols.[15]

The firm defended a libel action brought against Danish radiologist Henrik Thomsen, who had questioned the safety of a contrast agent used in patients undergoing MRI scans, which was produced by GE Healthcare. The firm represented Thomsen on a "no win, no fee" basis.[16]

The firm has been involved in several libel cases related to the missing child Madeleine McCann. Complaints were brought on behalf of the child's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, against the Daily Express, the Daily Star and their sister Sunday newspapers over stories that suggested that the parents may have been involved in Madeleine's disappearance. The complaints led to the publication of unprecedented front-page apologies to Kate and Gerry McCann, in addition to a payment of £550,000 in damages, which was donated to the fund to find Madeleine.[17][18]

Carter-Ruck also advised the so-called 'Tapas Seven',[19] the friends who were dining with the child's parents when she went missing. The complaints again led to the publication of an apology and a payment of £375,000 in damages, donated to the fundraising group Madeleine's Fund.[20]

MailOnline and its columnist Katie Hopkins published a full apology and paid £150,000 in damages to the Mahmood family over two articles published in December 2015. The article falsely conveyed the impression that Tariq and Zahid Mahmood were extremists linked to Al Qaeda whereas they were in fact two brothers taking their families on a trip to Disneyland.[21]

Carter-Ruck acted for Michael Martin, the former Speaker of the House of Commons, and secured the publication of an apology for Speaker (now Lord) Martin by The Times. The firm acted on a 'no win, no fee' basis and Lord Martin recovered his legal costs from the newspaper. It was reported that over £21,000 of public funds had been spent on employing Carter-Ruck to defend him against other newspaper reports that questioned whether he acted impartially in the House of Commons, although the House administration confirmed that they had endorsed the use of Carter-Ruck for that purpose.[22]

The Mirror issued an apology and agreed to pay compensation and legal costs to Carter-Ruck client former police Commander Roy Ramm, after the newspaper published false and defamatory allegations about him on its website on 8 March 2018. The article falsely depicted Mr Ramm as having responsibility for the police undercover operation and investigation into the murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common in July 1992, and alleged that, as a consequence, he was "disgraced". In fact Mr Ramm's role was limited to supplying a police officer for undercover work in the investigation.[23]

Shilpa Shetty consulted Carter-Ruck after the Celebrity Big Brother racism controversy; she later failed to pay a legal bill of £13,000 and was sued by the firm as a result.[24]

In late 2008, John Duignan, a former Scientologist, published The Complex: An Insider Exposes the Covert World of the Church of Scientology, a book critical of Scientology. Carter-Ruck, citing defamation laws, stopped Amazon from publishing the book in Britain.[25]

In 2010, Carter-Ruck represented the Church of Scientology regarding 28 September 2010 broadcast on "Secrets of Scientology" aired by BBC's Panorama, claiming the journalist involved was biased.[26]

In 2016, Carter-Ruck were again found to be representing Scientology in the UK when they sent several letters to Louis Theroux and his producers during the making of My Scientology Movie threatening, amongst other things, legal action and an injunction against its release. The film was released in 2015.

Carter Ruck were reported as aiding 'scammers' Tullett Brown[27] enabling them to continue trading for 3 years whilst netting £3.2 million from investors. They threatened to sue journalists including Tony Levene if they reported the information publicly, thus stifling free speech. However, Levene himself stifled an investigation by another newspaper by alerting Carter-Ruck through his internet postings. Carter-Ruck appear to try and distance themselves from criticism in the press by replying to The Guardian's questions – "The partner who dealt with Tullett Brown is no longer at Carter-Ruck. Also, as you are aware, Tullett Brown is now in liquidation. We have no instructions to respond to your questions."[28]

Carter-Ruck was instructed by commodities trader Trafigura over press coverage relating to the discharge of oil 'slops' from a Trafigura-chartered tanker in Côte d'Ivoire in 2006. Libel proceedings were brought against the BBC in 2009 after a broadcast of the current affairs programme Newsnight falsely suggested that Trafigura's actions caused a number of deaths, miscarriages and serious injuries. The BBC went on to broadcast an apology as the opening item on Newsnight.[29] The BBC also apologised in a Statement in Open Court.[30]

Corrections concerning Trafigura were also published by The Times,[31][32] The Independent,[33] and The Guardian.[34]

In September 2009, The Guardian reported that Carter-Ruck demanded it delete published articles relating to the Trafigura toxic oil disaster, saying it was "gravely defamatory" and "untrue" to say that Trafigura's waste had been dumped cheaply and could have caused deaths and serious injuries. The Guardian later reported that Trafigura agreed to pay compensation to 31,000 West African victims. The Guardian also alleged that other media outlets in the Netherlands and Norway were also threatened with gagging orders.[35] These turned out to be NRK in Norway, and De Volkskrant and Greenpeace in the Netherlands.

In October 2009, The Guardian published an article stating that it had been prevented from reporting on a parliamentary matter, being "forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret. The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck." The paper further claimed that this case appears "to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights".[36]

The question subject to the gagging order was from Paul Farrelly, MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.[37]

The following day the firm agreed to discharge the order preventing the reporting of the events, which concerned Trafigura and a draft chemistry report into the oil slops incident in Côte d'Ivoire.[38][39] Trafigura maintained that the report was a superseded draft report which was legally privileged and confidential, and that it had been obtained illegally and passed to The Guardian.[40]

According to a press release on Carter-Ruck's website the reason that The Guardian could not report the question asked by Paul Farrelly was because a gagging order had been in place since 11 September 2009, before the MP asked the question. They also stated that it had never been their intention to prevent the press reporting on parliament and that they had since agreed on changes with The Guardian to the gagging order so that they could report on the issue.[41] The firm also pointed out that The Guardian had in fact consented to the order preventing the newspaper from publishing any article about the chemistry report.

Subsequently, lawyers advising the Speaker of the House of Commons are reported to have agreed with Carter-Ruck's interpretation that the injunction as initially granted did prevent the press from reporting the Parliamentary question.[42]

The Conservative MP Peter Bottomley reported the firm to the Law Society due to their actions which prevented The Guardian covering parliamentary proceedings,[43] however the Law Society did not uphold any complaint.

In 2014, Carter-Ruck unsuccessfully sued cyber security company Spamhaus on behalf of California-based entrepreneurs Craig Ames and Rob McGee, who were involved with a bulk email marketing services business, initially through a US corporation called Blackstar Media LLC, and latterly as employees of Blackstar Marketing, a subsidiary of the English company Adconion Media Group Limited, which bought Blackstar Media in April 2011. Although an initial motion by Spamhaus to strike out the claims failed,[44] they ultimately prevailed when the claimants dropped their case and paid Spamhaus' legal costs.[45]

In September 2016 Carter-Ruck threatened legal action against Andrew Penman's exposé of the purported cryptocurrency OneCoin. In May 2017, police and financial actions in several countries revealed that Carter-Ruck's client appears indeed to be a Ponzi scheme.[46][47][48]

In July 2019 it was revealed that Carter-Ruck had written to Sam Matthews, the Labour Party's former head of disputes, warning he could face legal action for breaking his Non-disclosure agreement for blowing the whistle on the party's handling of antisemitism allegations.[49][50]

The Carter-Ruck Solicitors Law Firm acted on a case-by-case basis in June 2019 on behalf of the Embassy of Hungary, London, regarding Guardian and the Daily Telegraph articles. The value of the service is £2162.26., as Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed responding to the public information request of the Hungarian news portal 444.hu.[51]

In addition to those mentioned in the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade response (Guardian, Telegraph), 444.hu is aware of another case where Carter-Ruck acted on an article about the Hungarian government. The Carter-Ruck London office has sent several letters to Financial Times regarding an article published in July about bringing Hungary to the European Court of Justice, for Hungarian authorities trying to starve some asylum seekers in the Serbian border transit zone. As 444.hu knows, after the first letter of Carter-Ruck, the paper supplemented the article by specifying who the Hungarian authorities did not allow to eat in the transit zone, but still did not use the terminology that the Hungarian government preferred for foreigners in the transit zone.[51]

The Libel Reform Campaign cite many instances where the application of the libel laws by law firms like Carter-Ruck is effectively gagging the freedom of expression and free speech in England and Wales, leaving only the wealthy anywhere in the world able to seek justice in the UK where it would be denied in their own country.[54] See also Libel tourism. However, these criticisms have been challenged by leading media law academics Prof. Alastair Mullis and Dr Andrew Scott.[55]

An example of Carter-Ruck acting on behalf of a client to stifle criticism was reported in The Guardian newspaper on 19 January 2011. Carter-Ruck on behalf of Midland Pig Producers (MPP) issued a warning letter to the Soil Association (SA) threatening libel proceedings after the SA objected to a MPP planning application.[56] Threatening such proceedings, which are rarely followed through, is a typical modus operandi of Carter-Ruck (and other law firms) to minimise scrutiny of, and adverse publicity toward, their clients.