CMAJ, early release online, 16 August 2010, DOI:10.1503/cmaj.109-3336
Author: Dan Lett
“MDS Nordion Inc. has quietly walked away from a $2-million lawsuit it launched against an outspoken American academic who accused it of misleading the Canadian government about the impact of failing to quickly restart the troubled National Research Universal (NRU) reactor in Chalk River, Ontario, after its 2007 shutdown. The May 2008 lawsuit was launched against Alan Kuperman, an associate professor with the University of Texas LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas Austin.”
Find article here.
Archive for category Defamation
HCCC media release, 29 June 2010
“In the recent NSW District Court case Lucire v Parmigiani, the legal protection against defamation claims for people making a complaint to the Medical Board was tested. The case related to a medical practitioner who had complained to the Legal Officer of the Medical Board about another medical practitioner. The complaint arose when both practitioners were engaged as expert witnesses in a personal injury matter – one for the plaintiff and the other for the defendant side. In a letter to the Medical Board, one of the practitioners complained about the conduct of the other practitioner whilst giving expert evidence in court. The other practitioner claimed that this was defamation and brought the matter before the District Court. In her decision of 28 May 2010, Justice Gibson found that the complaint to the Medical Board was protected by absolute legal privilege, as provided by section 27 of the Defamation Act and section 47 of the Medical Practice Act.”
Find media release and link to court decision here.
BMJ 2010;340:c2150
Author: Clare Dyer
“Whichever party wins the general election in the United Kingdom on 6 May—and even if, as seems increasingly likely, the result is a hung parliament—libel reform is probably on the cards. All three parties have put the issue in their manifestos, though some more strongly and in more detail than others… A spate of libel actions against scientists has focused attention on the potential for self censorship to close down debate on health and public safety issues, even in peer reviewed journals.”
Find article here.
BMJ 2010;340:c2086
Author: Clare Dyer
“The British Chiropractic Association (BCA) has dropped its libel action against science writer Simon Singh, after a landmark appeal court judgment in his favour two weeks ago (BMJ 2010;340:c1895, doi: 10.1136/bmj.c1895). The association sued Dr Singh over an April 2008 comment piece in the Guardian newspaper that accused the association of “happily promoting bogus treatments” for such childhood ailments as colic and asthma.”
Find article here.
Find decision here.
“1. The claimant the British Chiropractic Association (the BCA) is a company limited by guarantee. Its objects include promoting and maintaining high standards of conduct and practice among the United Kingdom’s chiropractors, about half of whom it represents. It contends that it has been defamed by the defendant, a scientist and science writer, who in the edition of the Guardian of 19 April 2008 published on the paper’s “Comment and Debate” page an article which included this passage:
“The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.”
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4. [Eady J] went on to hold that these were assertions of fact, not expressions of opinion. If so, the defendant at trial must prove that the meanings are factually true or lose.
5. By this appeal, brought by permission of Laws LJ, the defendant contends that the judge was wrong in both respects. The claimant contends not only that Eady J was right but that his finding on meaning is a finding of fact which can only be overset by this court if we are quite sure that it is wrong.
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34. We would respectfully adopt what Judge Easterbrook, now Chief Judge of the US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, said in a libel action over a scientific controversy, Underwager v Salter 22 Fed. 3d 730 (1994):
“[Plaintiffs] cannot, by simply filing suit and crying ‘character assassination!’, silence those who hold divergent views, no matter how adverse those views may be to plaintiffs’ interests. Scientific controversies must be settled by the methods of science rather than by the methods of litigation. … More papers, more discussion, better data, and more satisfactory models – not larger awards of damages – mark the path towards superior understanding of the world around us.”
37. This appeal must be allowed”