Abuse victim wins libel victory

A Facebook post that a woman’s ex-husband ‘tried to strangle her’ was not libellous, the Supreme Court has held.

Nicola Stocker (now known as Nicola Coates), made the comment to her ex-husband, Ronald’s new partner, Deborah Bligh, who she had befriended on Facebook. She said he had been removed from their home following a number of threats that he had made, there were some ‘gun issues’, and the police felt he had broken the terms of a non-molestation order.

Legal discussion focused on whether the words in their context meant an intent to kill or an assault involving constriction of the neck to put the victim in fear of being killed. At trial, Mr Justice Mitting accepted evidence that police officers saw red marks on Mrs Stocker’s neck two hours after the incident. After referring to dictionary definitions of ‘strangle’, however, he held the comments were libellous because they implied an attempt to kill when, in fact, ‘his intention was to silence, not to kill’. He indicated that £5,000 damages plus legal costs would be payable. Following an unsuccessful appeal to the Court of Appeal, the legal costs she had to pay were in excess of £200,000.

Ruling in Stocker v Stocker [2019] UKSC 17, however, five Justices unanimously held in favour of Mrs Stocker, that Mitting J had erred in law by using dictionary definitions as the starting point of his analysis and by failing to take into account the context of the Facebook post.

Harriet Wistrich, director of Centre for Women’s Justice, which supported Mrs Stocker, said: ‘This case is a victory for common sense and for women who seek to warn others about men’s abuse.

‘The original judgment revealed a shocking ignorance amongst certain members of the judiciary of the realities of domestic violence. We are appalled that a woman speaking out about an accepted incident of domestic violence was subjected to these court proceedings―it is another example of abusive men using the court system to perpetuate their controlling behaviour.’