In a judgment handed down on 8 November, Collins Rice J ruled that the claimants, Daniel Miller and Nina Power, had failed to prove serious harm to reputation in relation to 16 tweets and a website ‘content warning’ on an archive published by the defendant, artist Luke Turner. She also dismissed the defendant’s counterclaim in harassment: whilst she found the claimants had bullied the defendant and targeted him with the ‘full lexicon of Twitter trolling’ including the ‘whiff of threat and antisemitism’, their conduct had not passed the quasi-criminal threshold required by the statute.
Catrin Evans KC (leading Jonathan Scherbel-Ball of 5RB) instructed by Mishcon de Reya acted for the defendant.
The Judgment contains some interesting remarks on the tension between free speech and harassment.