Court of Appeal halves damages in Laurence Fox v Simon Blake libel case over Twitter "racist" and "paedophile" exchanges

The Court of Appeal has delivered a significant judgement in the high-profile defamation case between actor-turned-politician Laurence Fox and three public figures who exchanged damaging tweets in October 2020. The decision provides important clarification on proving serious reputational harm under section 1 of the Defamation Act 2013 and the application of longstanding common law principles in the digital age.

The case arose from a Twitter dispute over Sainsbury's Black History Month messaging. Fox criticised the supermarket for "promoting racial segregation", prompting Simon Blake (CEO of Mental Health First Aid England), drag performer Colin Seymour, and broadcaster Nicola Thorp to call him racist in separate tweets. Fox responded by calling each of them a "paedophile" before deleting his tweets within 24 hours.

At trial, Mrs Justice Collins Rice dismissed Fox's counterclaim, finding he had failed to prove the "racist" allegations caused serious harm to his reputation. She awarded Blake and Seymour £90,000 each for Fox's "paedophile" tweets (Thorp's claim having been dismissed at an earlier stage). Fox appealed both decisions.

Lord Justice Warby, delivering the lead judgement, identified critical errors in the trial judge's approach to serious harm. The judge had improperly relied on evidence of previous third-party publications calling Fox racist and on Fox's own controversial statements to conclude that any reputational damage stemmed from these other sources rather than the tweets complained of.

This reasoning violated the "rule in Dingle" - the principle that defendants cannot rely on similar defamatory statements by others to show pre-existing bad reputation or alternative causation of general reputational harm. The Court emphasised that whilst third-party publications might explain specific consequences (such as loss of employment), they cannot be used to defeat claims for general reputational damage from mass publication of serious allegations.

The Court also found the judge had conflated Fox's claims about damage to his acting career with his broader claim for general reputational harm. These required separate analysis with different causation considerations. Additionally, the judge applied incorrect causation tests, asking whether the tweets were the sole cause rather than whether they materially contributed to the harm.

Given these errors, the Court concluded that each of the "racist" tweets inevitably caused serious reputational harm to Fox. The gravity of the allegation combined with publication to hundreds of thousands of followers compelled this finding, particularly absent any proven pre-existing general bad reputation.

Regarding the damages awards to Blake and Seymour, whilst upholding liability, the Court reduced the awards by half to £45,000 each. The judge had failed to properly account for Fox's prompt mitigation efforts - deleting the tweets, posting explanations that they were "baseless insults", and giving interviews acknowledging this. The judge also wrongly treated mainstream media coverage as additional harm when reports actually contextualised the exchange in ways that drew the defamatory sting.

The Court remitted Fox's counterclaim for retrial on the outstanding defences of honest opinion and truth, along with damages assessment if liability is established.

This judgement reinforces that mass publication of serious allegations on social media will generally satisfy the serious harm threshold through inference alone. It also confirms that established common law rules governing proof of reputation continue to apply under the 2013 Act, constraining how defendants can deploy evidence of other publications or conduct when contesting serious harm.