Rodoy v Optical Express: High Court finds defamatory statements substantially true despite serious harm to claimant's reputation

The High Court has dismissed a defamation claim brought by refractive eye surgery campaigner Sasha Rodoy against Optical Express Limited, ruling that the company's characterisation of her as "a self-confessed and known fraudster" and an online troll was substantially true, notwithstanding findings that the statements caused serious harm to her reputation.

In a judgement handed down on 22 May 2026, Mr Justice Griffiths found that Optical Express had included the defamatory passage in letters to four dissatisfied patients between 2020 and 2021, each of whom had referenced Ms Rodoy's "Optical Express Ruined My Life" website in their complaints. The judge accepted that the statements caused real and measurable reputational damage: recipients ceased contact with Ms Rodoy, one never re-engaged, and several dropped their complaints against Optical Express as a direct result of their diminished confidence in her.

The fraud allegation centred on Ms Rodoy's conduct during the 1990s, when she repeatedly sold fabricated stories to national and international media about a fictitious detective agency called "Decoy Dolls", purportedly specialising in exposing unfaithful husbands. The enterprise was, as she later admitted to the Mail on Sunday, "hype, hoax, a complete and utter scam". The judge found she had insisted on payment for every interview, earned what the Mail on Sunday described as a sizeable income, and recruited friends to pose as clients to lend credibility to the fiction.

The central legal question under section 2 of the Defamation Act 2013 was whether describing Ms Rodoy as a fraudster in 2020 and 2021 remained substantially true, given the conduct had occurred more than two decades earlier. Griffiths J answered in the affirmative, placing significant weight on Ms Rodoy's complete absence of contrition. In evidence, she said her only regret was "having to sit here and answer your questions", and when asked whether she would do it again, declined to say she would not. The judge concluded she remained, in character, the same person who had perpetrated the fraud, and that the present-tense description was therefore apt.

On the trolling allegations, the court examined extensive online conduct directed at Optical Express staff, including the publication of Dr Stephen Hannan's home address alongside inflammatory posts, a direct email containing an image of a severed pig's head, a disparaging comment left beneath a photograph of the Hannans' eighteen-month-old son, and numerous provocative interactions with junior call-centre staff conducted under the alias "Suriya". The judge distinguished between Ms Rodoy's legitimate campaigning activity and conduct that was, in his assessment, "gratuitous" and motivated by personal malice rather than any campaigning purpose. He found the trolling allegation substantially true, as was the further finding that her conduct had given reasonable grounds to suspect she placed staff safety at risk, particularly following police involvement in late 2014.

The court also considered qualified privilege, finding that Optical Express was in a continuing clinical and commercial relationship with each recipient and had a reciprocal interest in disclosing information about a third party the patients proposed to rely upon. Malice, which would have defeated the privilege, was not established: the judge accepted that David Moulsdale, who had drafted and directed the use of the statements, held an honest belief in their truth and was not motivated by personal spite.

The claim therefore failed on all remaining issues and no relief was granted.