Chris Packham CBE, a naturalist and environmental activist, has prevailed in the High Court in his defamation case against Dominic Wightman, editor of Country Squire Magazine, and Nigel Bean, a writer for the magazine. The court accepted Paul Read’s, the third claim that he solely served as a proofreader.
The court awarded Chris Packham £90,000 in damages from Mr. Wightman and Mr. Bean.
The case featured ten social media posts, two videos, and nine articles. It was heard between May 2 and May 11, 2023. The claims mentioned in these documents were found to be false and defamatory by the court.
The following were among the claims:
Chris Packham deceitfully raised money for the Isle of Wight’s Wildheart Sanctuary in support of rescued tigers, who he said were subjected to cruel treatment.
Mr. Packham made up information on peat burning on Scottish game estates during COP26.
Chris Packham dishonestly solicited donations for the sanctuary during the COVID outbreak while concealing the information that it would receive an insurance reimbursement.
During the trial, Mr. Wightman and Mr. Bean withdrew their truth defence in relation to the second and third of these allegations. However, the court decided that they “failed [to] come even close to establishing the substantial truth” of that allegation with regard to the first charge despite continuing to make a truth defence.
The court determined that Chris Packham did not fabricate any of his statements and that he genuinely thought they were accurate. When he produced the fundraising statements, he made no false representations of any type.
Additionally, Mr. Wightman and Mr. Bean asserted that it was in the public interest to make the claims public. According to the court, this defence was likewise unsuccessful “by some margin.”
The defendants, according to the court, “targeted Chris Packham as a person against whom they had an agenda rather than approaching the task with an investigative mind.” Specifically, the articles written by Mr. Wightman and Mr. Bean “gave way… to increasingly hyperbolic and vitriolic smearing of Mr. Packham, with further unsubstantiated allegations of dishonesty regarding peat-burning and the Trust’s insurance gratuitously thrown in,” following Mr. Packham’s initial legal complaint. A few of the pieces made disparaging comments regarding Mr. Packham’s autism, and one was accused of making fun of his speech pattern.
Throughout the trial, the court was made aware of the 16 pieces that Country Squire Magazine published in the four years prior to the first item in question and the 93 more tales that appeared in the three years following. As is customary for journalists, none of the pieces that featured accusations against Mr. Packham were published without first getting in touch with him for response. Furthermore, there was little written documentation indicating any of the assertions had been validated by in-depth research.
The court accepted Mr. Read’s case, which was limited to the following arguments: (i) as a mere proofreader, he had insufficient involvement in the articles; and (ii) his retweets of the defamatory allegations had not gone viral enough to have seriously harmed Mr. Packham’s reputation. Mr. Read withdrew his reliance on the defences of truth and public interest just before trial when he hired separate legal counsel.
When awarding Chris Packham considerable damages against Mr. Wightman and Mr. Bean, the High Court noted that their campaign “would have misled and agitated vocal and sometimes violent groups” who “posted threatening and vile material about Chris Packham and his family online.”
The Court further stated that the people had made false and malicious accusations against Chris Packham in an effort to “frighten [him] off… from seeking recourse in a public hearing for the libels.”
In addition to the articles, social media posts, and videos that were cited in the court case, it was claimed that the defendants also wrote a death threat that Chris Packham received. This particularly infuriated Mr. Packham since it implied that he had mislead his friends and family and squandered police time. The court stated: “Even a cursory examination of the handwriting in the death threat and comparison with a true sample of Mr. Packham’s handwriting demonstrates obvious differences between the two.” Therefore, the court found that Mr. Packham did not pen the letter threatening his life.
The court had additionally predicted that the handwriting expert retained by Mr. Wightman, Mr. Bean, and Mr. Read would be “horrified… and to have unequivocally withdrawn their evidence” when it became apparent in November 2022 that their report’s examination of samples of Mr. Packham’s accountant’s handwriting was what caused them to come to the conclusion that he wrote the death threat. Mr. Wightman, Mr. Bean, and Mr. Read did not own their error when it was made plain to them. The court further determined that Mr. Wightman was instrumental in obtaining statements that repeated the severe accusation from supposed third persons, including those that appeared in “The Packham Papers” and a Fieldsports TV segment. The claim of a death threat was not formally withdrawn by the other defendants and Mr. Read until the third day of the trial.
If you would like to discuss any libel or slander matters, please get in touch with the team today.
Written By Michael Coyle – Co-Founder & Solicitor Advocate
Michael is Lawdit’s Principal and heads our Commercial and Intellectual Property Department. As a Solicitor Advocate, he is one of a select group of legal experts qualified to represent clients as an advocate in the Higher Courts in England and Wales.
References for this article related to Chris Packham
Here are the references we used for this article related to Chris Packham and the Animal sanctuary. Please browse them below.
- The High Court (Judiciary.UK)
- Country Squire Magazine (CountrySquire.CO.UK)
- Chris Packham (Wikipedia.ORG)
- The COVID outbreak (WHO.INT)
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