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Libel On The Global Stage:
The Chessboard Of International Forums
For the Wall Street Journal, it was farce transformed into an effort to
pick its pocket. When Mohamed Al Fayed, the eccentric owner of upscale
London department store Harrods.
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threatened to sue the newspaper for libel
in the London High Court,
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the Journal responded with legal creativity. Its
lawyers sought an order from a federal court in the United States forbidding
Al Fayed and Harrods from seeking defamation damages from the Journal
for a story that reached the United Kingdom only on the Internet. The
attempt bombed when the court refused to issue the order.
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Yet, expensive as
lawyers are, the newspaper, owned by Dow Jones & Co., likely believed the
effort was worth the cost. No media outlet wants to be sued in London,
which has acquired a reputation as the venue where libel suits are most
likely to succeed.
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The case is illustrative of the new reality in the age of
global media and the Internet where often what is published in one nation is
instantly available around the world. This has intensified the globalization of
libel suits. The reality has created a chessboard in which the suers and the
sued seek to have libel cases decided in forums where the law is most
friendly to them. The chessboard maneuvers starkly contrast the liberal free
press guarantees of the United States against the more reputation-friendly
libel laws of other nations. The also illustrate the increasing assertions of
extra-territorial jurisdiction over the media by national courts.
The case’s origin is in a press release, headed “Al Fayed Reveals Plan
To ‘Float’ Shares,” from Al Fayed on March 31, 2002. In part it read:
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Al Fayed is the father of Dodi Al Fayed, escort of Princess Diana of Wales on the night the couple died in
a Paris car crash.
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Andrew Buurman, The Newspaper, The Shopkeeper And The April Fool That Went Horribly Wrong,
Independent on Sunday (London), June 16, 2002.
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Dow Jones & Company, Inc. v. Harrods, Limited, and Mohamed Al Fayed, ___ F.Supp.2d ___, 2002 U.S.
Dist. LEXIS 19516 (S.D.N.Y. 2002).
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Sarah Lyall, Where Suing for Libel Is a National Specialty; Britain’s Plaintiff-Friendly Laws Have
Become a Magnet for Litigators, New York Times, July 22, 2000.
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Convention