Overview
- The appeal judges left intact the finding that Laurence Fox libelled Simon Blake and Colin Seymour by calling them 'paedophiles'.
- Damages to Blake and Seymour were reduced from £90,000 each to £45,000 after the court deemed the original sums manifestly excessive.
- Fox’s counterclaim over tweets calling him 'racist' was reinstated for a fresh High Court trial after the Court of Appeal identified legal errors in its dismissal.
- The retrial will examine whether those posts caused serious harm and whether defences of truth or honest opinion succeed.
- An injunction preventing Fox from targeting Blake and Seymour online remains in place, in a case that began with a 2020 dispute over Sainsbury’s Black History Month posts on X.