Fiddes v Channel Four Television Corporation and others [2010] EWCA Civ 730, [2010] All ER (D) 248 (Jun)
Defamation—Trial—Trial by judge
Fiddes v Channel Four Television Corporation and others [2010] EWCA Civ 730, [2010] All ER (D) 248 (Jun)
Court of Appeal, Civil Division, Lord Neuberger MR, Maurice Kay and Sedley LJJ, 29 Jun 2010
It is only in the most exceptional circumstances that it can ever be justifiable even to consider obtaining a transcript of an interlocutory hearing for the purposes of an appeal.
Ronald Thwaites QC and David Sherborne (instructed by M Law) for the claimant. Adrienne Page QC and Yuli Takatsuki (instructed by Aslan Charles Kousetta LLP) for the defendant.
The claimant was a martial arts expert who owned a chain of schools in the West Country. He issued proceedings against the defendants alleging that he had been libelled in a television programme of November 2008. The programme was a documentary about the proposed move to Devon by the Jackson family, the famous musicians. As the defendants accepted, the programme suggested that the claimant had