Motormouth cleared

Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson did not libel the makers of an electric car, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

In Tesla Motors Ltd & Anor v BBC [2013] EWCA Civ 152, Lord Justice Moore-Bick dismissed Tesla’s appeal over an unfavourable review of its Roadster, an electric sports car based on the Lotus Elise.

The legal action centred on Clarkson’s comment during an episode of Top Gear broadcast in 2008 that Tesla said the car “would do 200 miles” when in fact it ran out of battery after just 55 miles on the Top Gear test track. This was followed by footage of the electric Roadster being pushed into the hangar.

Tesla argued Clarkson’s comments were defamatory because they implied it “intentionally or recklessly grossly misled potential purchasers” by claiming the car had a longer range than it did. Tesla said the BBC film contained other inaccuracies, including saying another Roadster had broken brakes, and claimed malicious falsehood on the BBC’s part in order to cause the company pecuniary damage.

However, Mr Justice Tugendhat dismissed the claim, noting that no reasonable person would compare the car’s performance on the Top Gear test track, which involved heavy cornering and acceleration, with that on public roads; therefore they would not infer Tesla had set out to mislead. The malicious falsehood claim did not go to appeal due to causation issues.

Dismissing Tesla’s appeal, Moore-Bick LJ said: “The fact is that the difference between the two was obviously so great that a reasonable viewer would realise that the comparison was meaningless. In my view, therefore, the judge was right to hold that the words complained of were incapable of bearing the meaning which Tesla sought to attribute to them.”

Referring to the case of Jameel v Dow Jones & Co Inc [2005] EWCA Civ 75, Moore-Bick LJ  said there were difficulties identifying any pecuniary loss likely to have been caused by the false statements, although he would “hesitate” to describe the proceedings as an abuse of process.