Published on 9 May 2022
FOURTH SECTION
Application no. 39449/21
Grzegorz Zenon MALKIEWICZ and Others
against the United Kingdom
lodged on 30 July 2021
communicated on 21 April 2022
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The applicants are the owner and editors of a Polish-language monthly magazine widely read by the London Polish community. They were sued for libel by the subject of an article published in the magazine, who was funded by a conditional fee arrangement (“CFA”). A High Court judge dismissed the claim, having found that most of the allegations against the claimant were true and that the public interest defence applied to all of them. The Court of Appeal allowed the claimant’s appeal, finding, inter alia, that the judge had been wrong to uphold the public interest defence; that he had not been entitled to find that the most serious allegation against the claimant was true; and that the trial had been unfair. The Court of Appeal remitted the case for an assessment of the quantum of the claimant’s damages. The Supreme Court dismissed the applicants’ appeal but ordered that there should be a full retrial. It made no order for the costs of the original trial (although the costs incurred by the ultimately successful party were to be reserved to the judge at the retrial), but ordered the applicants to pay 60% of the claimant’s costs in both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. The applicants were also ordered to make an interim payment of GBP 50,000 to the claimant.
Prior to the retrial the matter settled with no order as to costs, on the proviso that the applicants did not seek the return of the interim payment.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Did the recoverability of the claimant’s success fees violate the applicants’ rights under Article 10 of the Convention (see, mutatis mutandis, MGN Limited v. the United Kingdom (no. 39401/04, 18 January 2011)?
2. Did the operation of the costs regime in the present case raise any other issues under Article 10 of the Convention?
3. Have the applicants exhausted domestic remedies within the meaning of Article 35 § 1 of the Convention?
4. As the applicants settled the defamation claim brought against them, have they ceased to be victims of the alleged violation within the meaning of Article 34 of the Convention?
APPENDIX
No.
Applicant’s Name
Year of birth/
registration
Nationality
Place of residence
1.
Grzegorz Zenon MALKIEWICZ
1956
Polish
London
2.
Teresa BAZARNIK-MALKIEWICZ
1957
Polish
London
3.
CZAS PUBLISHERS LIMITED
2006
British
London