Dear Londoners — I’ve got some very big news to share. For the past six months, a stressful part of my life has been exchanging emails with lawyers. These messages have served as a daily reminder that we were dealing with the thing every journalist dreads: being sued. And more specifically, that we were being sued in the High Court.
As many of you know, an Italian businessman called Claudio Di Giovanni brought a defamation case against The Londoner back in October, pursuing us for £250,000 in damages after we exposed his property arbitrage scheme. The lawsuit had three targets: Mill Media, the independent media company I started six years ago that runs The Londoner; Cormac Kehoe, the freelance journalist who wrote the story; and me personally.
Di Giovanni had engaged in a sustained campaign of legal intimidation, at one point telling Cormac that he might end up in jail. At another point, he threatened us with “criminal proceedings” for harassment and malicious communications, “a custodial sentence in the event of contempt of court or criminal conviction”, potential asset freezes and personal accountability for legal costs.
Over the past few months, Cormac and I have sat in the ornate Court 13 at the Royal Courts of Justice, wondering nervously if the judge would rule in our favour.
Until, a few days ago, I looked at my phone at lunchtime and saw a message from our solicitor, Anne Mannion. It took my brain a few seconds to process that the vibe of this email seemed different:
“Great news!! The attached judgment was handed down this morning and we have won!!!”
I opened the attachment and read the judgment from Mrs Justice Steyn. It was, indeed, extremely good news. The High Court had decisively ruled in our favour and thrown out the two lawsuits brought by Di Giovanni.
This means his High Court case against us is over. It also means the court has struck out the £10,000 county court judgment that Di Giovanni had illegitimately secured against Cormac, ending an incredibly stressful period for him.
“Thank god that’s over,” Cormac texted me last night when I asked for his reaction to the outcome. “I’m beyond grateful to Mill Media — if you didn’t stand behind me, I would’ve been under ten times the pressure.”
Last week, the New Statesman mentioned our case as a prime example of the way that wealthy people use the threat of costly legal battles to isolate and bully journalists. It’s taken a huge amount of money and energy to defend this case, but I’m absolutely delighted that the court has ruled in our favour. We always felt this was an abuse of the court process, and it’s good to see that confirmed in black and white from a High Court judge. Press Gazette has just reported on our win in the case.
It’s a major victory for The Londoner, and it shows the value of standing up for our journalism rather than caving to legal threats and demands to take down our stories. We hope the case sends a message that we will always go to court to defend our reporting and anyone who writes for us, whether they are staff or freelance contributors.
Plainly an abuse of process
In the judgment handed down by Mrs Steyn (which you can read here), the court said that Di Giovanni’s tactic of bringing lawsuits in both the county and the High Court in a bid to force a settlement from us was a severe violation of court rules. Steyn wrote:
Bringing duplicate proceedings in parallel and for such a purpose is plainly an abuse of process. Moreover, having parallel proceedings running in tandem would be obstructive of justice. For these reasons, the Strike Out Application succeeds.
Furthermore, the judge highlighted that Di Giovanni arbitrarily doubled his monetary demands in the county court case by adding an extra £5,000 under the guise of "interest" when filing for default judgment, noting:
There was no justification for adding £5,000 in his request, purportedly as 'interest'. I agree that was an abuse.
Steyn ruled that the collapse of the High Court case was "attributable to the claimant's own continuing failure" to follow mandatory court procedures. She notes that after bringing the case, Di Giovanni didn’t respect basic rules about how to litigate it, including not properly serving us with his claim. “He has given no explanation for his failure.”
Our brilliant lawyers — led by Anne Mannion at Lewis Silkin and Claire Overman at Doughty Street Chambers — have written to Di Giovanni to inform him that we will be pursuing a costs order from the court to recover the almost £40,000 we have spent in legal fees as a result of his claims. Under the Civil Procedure Rules, it is the unsuccessful party that pays the costs of the successful party.
I'm writing this because I want to express my sincere thanks to our paying Londoner members. Your messages and comments of support have been a real fillip, and your subscriptions have given us the financial backing to know that we can defend claims like this because our readers will row in behind us. You’ve been with us through a very challenging experience, and we massively appreciate it.
When we first approached Di Giovanni before publishing our story, he threatened us with legal action. In many newsrooms, the choice would be made to quietly drop the story at that stage, but we believe that journalists shouldn't be silenced. Even though we're a tiny outfit, we took a different path, and didn't back down.
If you think this city — known as a haven for those who want to silence the press — needs courageous journalism, then I would be grateful if you joined The Londoner today as a paying member. Not only will you be supporting the revival of high-quality local journalism in the capital, you will also get lots of extra members-only newsletters from us, and will be invited to our upcoming Londoner Live events where we discuss and debate the big issues facing the capital.
Join the community now, and thanks for reading.
If you have an investigative story that you want our team to look into, please get in touch.
