Jury Awards Former Mayor £65,000 for Aeroplane Banner Libels

On 24 October 2003, following a bitterly-contested two week libel trial, a High Court jury unanimously awarded Mrs Jenifer Howlett, a former Mayor and Councillor in Castle Point Borough Council in Essex, £65,000 in libel damages against Essex multi-millionaire Terry Holding and his company, Holding & Barnes PLC. In what is believed to be the first libel trial of its kind, the defamatory allegations in question were largely contained in banners trailed by the Defendants behind an aircraft.

During the year 2000, Mrs Howlett was a vocal critic of a highly controversial planning application which was being made by Mr Holding and his company, which stores and auctions accident-damaged cars. Mrs Howlett's criticisms prompted the Defendants to commence a three year campaign against her, most clearly manifested by the repeated flying of 60-foot banners which read, for example, "TELL US ABOUT SHOPLIFTING COUNCILLOR HOWLETT" and "THE THIEF NEXT ELECTION - BE WARNED!". These were trailed behind Mr Holding's private aircraft flying over Canvey Island and the surrounding area - an area with a population in the region of 400,000, and where Mrs Howlett and her family had been living and working for over 30 years. The Defendants also dropped thousands of leaflets from their aircraft repeating the untruthful allegations.

In May 2002, Mrs Howlett (advised by Cameron Doley and Adam Tudor of Carter-Ruck) commenced libel proceedings against Mr Holding and his company, Holding & Barnes Plc.

At the trial, which lasted two weeks and involved the Court hearing evidence from more than twenty witnesses, the Defendants attempted to persuade the jury that the allegations concerning Mrs Howlett were true.

The jury, however, clearly accepted Mrs Howlett's version of events as they returned a unanimous verdict in her favour, awarding her £65,000 in damages. The trial judge, Mr Justice Eady, ordered an injunction preventing the Defendants from repeating the untruthful allegations. He also ordered the Defendants to pay Mrs Howlett's legal costs, a very large proportion of them on the indemnity basis.

Mrs Howlett's victory represents a particularly welcome success for Carter-Ruck's Conditional Fee Agreement scheme. Mrs Howlett was an individual, of modest means, whose life had been made (as she put it) a "living hell", and whose reputation had been severely damaged by the libels. Furthermore, as part of their campaign, the Defendants had goaded Mrs Howlett to sue them, no doubt on the assumption that she would not have the means to do so. Their bluff was called.

STOP PRESS:

The £65,000 damages awarded by the jury in this case was the highest libel award in 2003. The second highest was the £61,000 which London based newspaper Al Arab was ordered to pay Sheik Rashid Ghannouchi in March - another case in which Managing Partner Cameron Doley's team at Carter-Ruck acted for the successful Claimant