The Hotel End

How interesting, read this old thread. Without predjudice does anyone care to share the original issues and outcome? It was a bit before my time on this site. http://www.smfserver.com/forums/thehotelend/index.php/topic,116.0.html?PHPSESSID=f480fe0092040a17c1b911627a749e4f

As both still post on here we can assume the legal action didn't materialise.

The retrospective irony of that post  ;D ;D ;D
It is fair to say that there are still a few issues (roughly ten million of them) yet to be resolved.

If any one is interested read this excerpt of an interpretation of defamation below. Although I would recommend anyone seek independant advice before stating anything they feel might put themselves at risk. As serious financial loss is unlikely to be demonstrated from comments on this site and proving something was not honest opinion would also be difficult I would suggest legal action would have been unlikely from the start? Something that the authors probably would have considered. That being said I don’t know the content of the original comments. However, given those involved in posting this would have been aware of the legal difficulties the statement from those controlling the club at the time does give a fasanating insight. Particularly when coupled with the Steve Riches incident and the like. It seems to indicate influencing control over public image was very much a motivation for the owners at the time?

Under the Defamation Act, a statement can be said to be defamatory if its publication "caused or is likely to cause serious harm" to individuals' or businesses' reputation. However, only if businesses have suffered, or are likely to suffer, "serious financial loss", can they bring a claim of defamation against commentators.

The authors of defamatory comments can avoid becoming liable for damages if they can show "that the imputation conveyed by the statement complained of is substantially true" or, if the comments took the form of an opinion, that the opinion is one which "an honest person could have held the basis of any fact which existed at the time the statement complained of was published; anything asserted to be a fact in a privileged statement published before the statement complained of".