Daily Mail website incited abuse against Chris Huhne’s partner, court told

Carina Trimingham seeks to add harassment claim to privacy action over series of artlcles The Daily Mail has been accused in the high court of inciting users of its website to be abusive to the partner of government minister Chris Huhne. William Bennett, a barrister acting for Carina Trimingham in a privacy action against Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers, told the court on Wednesday that the alleged prejudicial nature of a series of articles which appeared in the paper last summer left her feeling persecuted and harassed. Bennett requested that his client’s privacy action against Associated Newspapers be amended to include an alleged breach of the Protection from Harassment Act. The hearing was then adjourned after Mr Justice Tugendhat agreed to amend Trimingham’s claim, but said it was unrealistic to hear the additional action without giving Associated time to analyse and defend it. Associated’s barrister, Antony White QC, had earlier objected to the addition of the harassment claim and sought an adjournment at Trimingham’s expense. White said that he had no advance warning of Trimingham’s harassment claim and it was “unfair to be bounced on day two of the trial into a different claim without having had an opportunity to consider the particulars of the fresh allegations”. Trimingham’s privacy action relates to a series of eight articles about her relationship with Huhne, which she claims breached the Press Complaints Commission code of practice for journalists, which prohibits the mention of a person’s sexuality unless relevant. Bennett said the articles, one of which included a wedding photo from a previous marriage, also breached her rights to a “reasonable expectation of privacy”. He added that he had identified a further 39 articles containing alleged “homophobic prejudice” that were “likely to stimulate an abusive reaction” from Daily Mail readers and users of the Mail Online website. “Readers’ comments – all 58 of them are all abusive in character,” he claimed. “The Daily Mail incites its readers to be abusive because of the tone of its articles.” Bennett said his client was “subjected to vile abuse on the readers’ comments pages”. •

Posted by on October 5, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.