Evening Standard told to pay £70,000 to Frenchman who sued over false abuse claims
Frenchman Bruno Lachaux has been awarded £70,000 in compensation from the publisher of the Evening Standard after it published unverified claims he had abused his ex-wife.
Lachaux, a French national who lives in Abu Dhabi, sued after stories were published in the Evening Standard, the Independent and the i newspapers in 2014.
The stories reported allegations made by his British ex-wife Afsana Lachaux, which included claims he was violent and controlling towards her, causing her to flee for her safety.
She also accused him of snatching their son Louis from her, hiding his passport so he could not leave the UAE and falsely accusing her of kidnap.
In response to the ruling, a spokesperson for Independent Print and The Evening Standard told City PM that “we are disappointed by today’s ruling. Our defence was built on the basis that publication of these articles was in the public interest. We will continue to deliver high quality and trustworthy journalism, reporting on the news that matters.”
Libel suit
Lachaux denied all the allegations and sued for libel, later claiming that his ex-wife had been violent towards him.
The two publishers of the three newspapers – Evening Standard Limited and Independent Print Limited – argued the articles were not defamatory because they did not cause “serious harm” to Lachaux’s reputation.
The issue of serious harm reached the Supreme Court which found in 2019 that while serious harm was required, the threshold had been met in this case.
The newspaper publishers had also previously defended the articles as true but dropped the defence after a separate High Court judge rejected allegations Mrs Lachaux was a victim of abuse or violence from Lachaux in a family court case.
Today’s ruling
The two companies continued with the libel battle, defending the articles as being in the public interest, and in a judgment delivered today, Mr Justice Nicklin ruled in favour of Mr Lachaux.
The judge said: “The Standard article contained seriously defamatory allegations against the claimant. Although not named, he was readily identifiable.”
He added: “The terms and tone of the Standard article were wholly sympathetic to and supportive of Afsana.”
The judge said the allegations, relayed through Afsana’s older son, were adopted by the paper without contacting Lachaux for his version of events.
“To an ordinary reasonable reader, the Evening Standard was clearly siding with Afsana,” Mr Justice Nicklin added.
He continued: “Fundamentally, I have no hesitation in finding that it was not in the public interest to publish the Standard article, which contained allegations that were seriously defamatory of the claimant, without having given him an opportunity to respond to them.”
Mr Justice Nicklin said the Independent’s coverage featured a “serious failure (of) basic journalistic good practice” by also failing to contact Lachaux.
He said: “The allegations made by the Independent article against the claimant were very grave.
“Judged objectively, the source of the allegations, Afsana, was known to be locked in litigation with the claimant, her estranged spouse, and was facing, according to the article, charges of kidnapping.
“At the very least, there was an obvious risk that she had an axe to grind.”
The judge said none of the people involved in publishing the Independent’s story took any steps to verify the allegations.
Damages
Evening Standard Limited, the publisher of the London daily paper, will pay £70,000, while Independent Print Limited, publisher of the Independent and the former publisher of the i, was ordered to pay £50,000 in damages.
Mr Lachaux had previously settled a claim with the Huffington Post for its version of the story, with its publisher Oath (UK) Ltd paying £40,000 in damages.
The engineer previously said he felt “like a pawn in a game”, describing the articles “as a severe blow to me in my dignity and in my capacity as a father and a husband, especially given all the efforts I had made over a period of years to be reunited physically and legally with Louis after Afsana disappeared with him”.
Following Thursday’s ruling, Mr Lachaux will have received a total of £160,000 in compensation.
“Having regard to the seriousness of the allegations, the extent of publication and the purposes of an award of damages in libel proceedings, I am satisfied that this is a just and proportionate sum for the claimant to receive by way of compensation,” Mr Justice Nicklin concluded.