Common sense at last

Two stories caught my eye recently. Victories for common sense, against an increasing climate of Americanisation through the courtroom mentality of “ Sue-Them, Grabbit & Run”. Never heard of them? They’re the people that thinks someone else is always to blame. It’s never your own fault. Or that, basically, shit happens.

One was the magnificent result for freedom, and the right to have an opinion, that was the outcome in the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal. In a previous hearing restaurateur Cieran Convery of West Belfast based Goodfellas Pizza, sued the ‘Irish News’ over a critical review published in August 2000. Restaurant critic Caroline Workman had slagged off the food quality, the staff and the smoky atmosphere. Which, in her line of work, you’d think she was quite entitled to do.

Astonishingly more than a year ago a libel jury ruled the review was defamatory, damaging and hurtful and awarded Convery twenty five grand in damages. The paper appealed, claiming it would be ludicrous if libel proceedings could be issued every time a critic wrote a bad review. The Court of Appeal ruled that the jury had been misdirected by the trial judge. A retrial was ordered, but Convery must decide whether to pursue the case again. Well I bloody well hope he does…and loses even more money in legal costs!

If he does go ahead and he wins then it will be the end of the freedom to express how you feel. Not just for ‘establishment’ media like newspapers, but also for the more modern medium of bloggers like myself, who write about anything and everything, with the freedom at the moment of being able to express themselves is a much more forthright way than any hack from a local rag ever can.

He may have felt genuinely aggrieved, but are you really telling me that his eatery was so dependant on a decent review from that paper? If his pizzeria could be made or broken by one write up then it clearly wasn’t that good in the first place. If the food was worth eating, and value for money, and a good night out then it wouldn’t matter what the papers said, and his customers would have loyally packed the place out night after night.

Unless the staff were rude, the room too smoky, and the food crap. Oh sorry, that’s what the review said in the first place!


The next tale was a truly funny one of sour grapes for the loser, which seems quite funny at first glance, but actually makes you wonder how greedy some people can be….

Alexander Martin-Sklan, a 55 year old accountant from Golders Green in north London, took Marks & Spencers to court, suing them for three hundred grands worth of damages, after he fell over in the car park of his local branch. But he claimed that he actually slipped on a grape from their store, that was dropped outside, and it got stuck on his shoe causing him to slip over! Shit happens my friend, and it’s called bad luck! Instead of counting his payout this week he’s counting the cost of a fifteen thousand pound bill for legal fees, as he’s forced to swallow a huge portion of Marks & Sparks sour grapes, after his baloney was blown out of court by the judge.

What is sad is not that he took on a giant of the high streets and lost, but that his bullshit being rumbled won’t deter others by trying it on against the big companies. I reckon he took a gamble that they would settle out of court and they never. Maybe they offered and he turned it down. If that was the case he’s an even bigger mug than I thought.

But instead of having a smile on my face as I write about these court cases, all I’m left doing is scratching my head in utter bewilderment, wondering how on earth they were allowed to get to court in the first place. Plain crazy, but thankfully common sense prevailed. Sadly I fear this will be the exception, rather than the rule, as people continue to greedily pursue these American style legal claims.