Ex-footballer Joey Barton apologises and pays Jeremy Vine £75,000 over “bike nonce” tweet – but Vine says apology “is not the final outcome of this case”

mitsky wrote:

As the saying goes:

Don't forget, Trump kept getting fined for his comments on social media/to the media during his trial(s).
Didn't stop him.

The self described stable genius was able to turn 34 felony indictments into 44 convictions by adding 10 convictions for contempt of court. His sentence hearing in the second week of July will require the judge to consider all these convictions, sentence guidelines, aggrevating factors, the convicts remorse, and the report of the Probation Service.

Each of his 34 felony convictions has a maximum 4 years incarceration.

It won't get sent to prison as it would be a logistical nightmare due to the security arrangements required.

The most it will get, in my view, is 6 months house arrest.
Hopefully it won't also be allowed to use social media for that time too, so basically it will have no contact with the outside world aside from anyone visiting.

Part of the preliminary hearing in this case was to establish whether a "reasonable reader" would think Barton was making a specific allegation about Vine: Barton argued that it was simply "vulgar abuse" which nobody would take seriously and therefore isn't actionable. The judge found otherwise. 

He's settled the case because once that had been decided, he basically had no chance of winning unless he could prove his allegations were substantially true. And that seems fair enough: there are few things worse than paedophilia to be accused of, and people shouldn't be able to falsely and knowingly tell millions of people that you're a paedophile without fear of consequence. 

Brauchsel wrote:

there are few things worse than paedophilia to be accused of

He did call him a cyclist as well.

I wonder if it was actually calling him a paedophile that was regarded as the worst aspect of the case, "bike nonce" is sadly such a common phrase on the Internet that the average reader would understand it's just a nasty insult rather than a substantive allegation; I would've thought that the allegation that Vine had defended/protected Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris would sound far more believable to the uninitiated/stupid ("they're all like that at the BBC"), I'd guess that would be the allegation Vine really wanted to clear his name of in court.

The judgement is on BAILII, but from what I remember Barton repeatedly combined "nonce", links to Rolf Harris and some link to Phillip Schofield along with a suggestion that Vine shouldn't be allowed near primary schools.

He tried to argue in court that "nonce" just means "idiot" or similar, but the judge (correctly in my view) ruled that the reasonable reader would know that it's usually used as a suggestion of kiddy-fiddling. The libel Vine sued on was that he has a sexual interest in children, and the repeated use of "nonce" was a big factor in the court's finding that Barton had indeed accused him of that. 

For libel in the English law system, it isn't enough to just prove that what was said was innacurate, it also has to be harmful. 

(I may be recalling a case where a pop star sued regarding somoene publishign a story that they were gay, but it was rejected because although false, they weren't able to prove that it caused harm)

There's no precident set here, it's following already establish laws. The main issue is the person making the claims. If you or I went round the internet all day calling people that from an account with 75 followers no one would believe the statements, you'd be seen as a crank and ignored. However if an influencial famous person with millions of followers does it they are likely to be believed, and people will act on those beliefs. So the issue isn't so much the accusations as the impact it will have on the victim.

I would guess that he "might" have learnt his lesson if losing £75k actually had an impact on his life.
Though I wouldn't bet on either of those things.

I'd be £75k was covered by his go fund me. Hopefully a lot more will be due to really hurt the pratt.

The most influential people in the world are generally not there due to their intellect or expertise these days. America elected a president entirely because he was famous and not in a good way. 

Sadly large number of Brits might vote for candidates of a political party which is substantively run by Nigel Farage.

I think it is an incorporated company whose majority stakeholder is NF.  Political PArties tend to be unincorporated membership organisations. 

Samtheeagle wrote:

I think it is an incorporated company whose majority stakeholder is NF.  Political PArties tend to be unincorporated membership organisations. 

Hold on, does "NF" stand for National Front or Nigel Farage?

Yes

mdavidford wrote:

road.cc wrote:

who earned one cap for England as a late substitute in a friendly defeat to Spain

Ouch!

Yeah, never feel that easy with that one, the man is a 100% gold-plated cockwomble and I despise everything he says and has done, but when all's said and done he did get an England cap and played fifteen years of top-flight soccerball...there's enough to deride him for without making out he was a rubbish footballer, because his record shows he clearly wasn't.

Rendel Harris wrote:

Yeah, never feel that easy with that one, the man is a 100% gold-plated cockwomble and I despise everything he says and has done, but when all's said and done he did get an England cap and played fifteen years of top-flight soccerball...there's enough to deride him for without making out he was a rubbish footballer, because his record shows he clearly wasn't.

Well, he was at top flight clubs in 15 seasons.  In five of them he played fewer than 10 games, including one where he played none and wasn't even given a squad number.

But you are right, of course, that he was not a rubbish footballer.  Equally, he was nowhere near as good as he thought himself.  A lack of self-awareness which is has taken into his later pursuits.

If he was as good as you make out, 15 years at the top level, he would have spent more than 10mins in an England shirt in one game.

stevemaiden wrote:

If he was as good as you make out, 15 years at the top level, he would have spent more than 10mins in an England shirt in one game.

Not necessarily.  For example (and much that I hate to say big up Man Utd) Steve Bruce played many years in the top flight and captained the (at the time) best team in the country and never played for England.

In the 79th minute so 11 minutes on the pitch, pub quiz fact is there are 7 shorter England careers than Barton's.

Maybe a case for the Guardian Knowledge (if it hasn't been answered there already)?

Edit: thought that was a question. Who are they then?

Depends what you mean by "working" - it sounds to me like this was an out-of-court settlement rather than a result delivered by the courts per se. Plus it only "works" for people who can afford to hire lawyers (or occassionally are sufficiently high profile that the lawyers will work pro bono) - defamation cases in particular are notoriously expensive to both bring and defend (https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/jan/14/as-a-lawyer-i-know-bogus-libel-claims-can-bankrupt-honest-defendants-the-english-courts-must-change).

True.