The High Court has struck out part of Georgetown University Press's defence in solicitor Paul Tweed's defamation action over a passage in a book dealing with alleged influence operations linked to the United Arab Emirates.
Tweed seeks damages over publication of "Subversion: The Strategic Weaponization of Narratives" by Dr Andreas Krieg. The disputed passage refers to a London-based consultancy working with a British libel lawyer who sent cease-and-desist letters concerning critics of the UAE. Footnotes identify Tweed by name.
Tweed pleads that the passage accuses him, among other things, of acting as a covert agent, improperly intimidating critics and abusing his position as a solicitor. Those allegations remain to be determined at trial.
Georgetown University Press denies that the passage bears Tweed's pleaded meanings. It also advanced an alternative meaning: that Tweed, acting as a lawyer for clients, sent correspondence to publishers, universities and social-media companies concerning critics of the UAE and associated figures, and that his activities helped Abu Dhabi silence critics in the West. The publisher pleaded that this alternative meaning was true.
Tweed applied to strike out that meaning. The central question was whether it was itself capable of being defamatory, a requirement for an alternative meaning used to support a truth defence.
Mr Justice Micheál O'Higgins accepted that courts should intervene sparingly because juries have a central role in deciding meaning in defamation cases. However, he held that the pleaded alternative crossed the high threshold for strike-out.
The judge considered it important that the publisher accepted its alternative meaning did not accuse Tweed of improper conduct, unethical behaviour, intimidation, abuse of process, pursuing baseless claims or using litigation for ulterior purposes.
A reasonable reader, he held, would understand the representative role of lawyers and would not think less of a solicitor merely for acting on clients' instructions and sending effective correspondence on their behalf.
The alternative meaning was therefore not even arguably defamatory and was ordered struck out. The court expressly left open whether the passage in the book itself is defamatory; that remains an issue for trial.