Carole Cadwalladr successfully defends Aaron Banks libel action

British journalist Carole Cadwalladr has successfully defended a defamation suit brought against her by businessman Aaron Banks, one of the major funders of the pro-Brexit cause during the UK's 2016 referendum on EU membership.

Carole Cadwalladr, a freelance journalist whose work has most often appeared in The Guardian and Observer, is probably best known for her investigation into digital influence company Cambridge Analytica. She has been a vocal critic of the conduct of the Brexit referendum campaign online, and of Aaron Banks in particular.

Cadwalladr was sued, not on the basis of her writing for the Guardian, but for statements she had made in situations where she would have no access to institutional support: a tweet from her personal account and a 2019 statement made during a widely circulated TED Talk ("And I’m not even going to go into the lies that Arron Banks has told about his covert relationship with the Russian government.”)

Libel cases in the UK are expensive to fight and Cadwalladr was obliged to crowdfund her defence. The victory is all the more impressive because Carole Cadwalladr's legal team were obliged to fight the suit on the basis of public interest, a defence introduced in the last round of reforms to the UK's libel laws in 2013, and one that very few manage to prevail on.

A preliminary hearing had decided that the meaning of Cadwalladr's statements was that Banks had lied about discussions with representatives of the Russian state connected with electoral funding. This was not an allegation that Cadwalladr could argue was true.

Instead, Carole Cadwalladr's legal team argued that she had had reasonable grounds to make the statement she did at the time. Mrs Justice Steyn accepted this argument in her ruling, noting that the allegation Carole Cadwalladr had wanted to convey had not been as serious as that decided at the meanings hearing. Moreover, Aaron Banks had been under investigation by the Electoral Commission and the National Crime Agency at the time when the statement was made. Neither of those organisations went on to take any action against Banks.

Mrs Justice Steyn said: “In the Ted Talk Ms Cadwalladr made a serious contribution to the discussion of a subject that was of real and abiding public interest at the time of publication. Moreover, the words complained of were themselves on an important matter of public interest.

“It was reasonable for Ms Cadwalladr to regard those words as forming part of the story that she was telling about the potential for targeted political advertising on social media to undermine democracy.”

Though Mrs Justice Steyn's ruling was careful to state that Aaron Banks' defamation suit did not amount to a SLAPP, there is no doubt that these legal proceedings have had a significant cost for Cadwalladr personally. Losing the case would have made her liable for Banks' costs (estimated at between £750,000 and £1 million) as well as any awarded damages.

In response to the ruling, Banks stated that he is considering an appeal.