bawdy-nan

Well - goodness me. You're providing great resources for my revision. I'm about to sit a media law exam and your discussions on defamation are timely and useful. First of all, I certainly wasn't trying to bully anyone. I simply thought you'd want to know. If I was standing in the road and a car was about to hit me I'd like to be told by a passer-by who might be able to see it coming. You all seemed very concerned about losing money and, frankly, the sums at stake if you were to deal with a libel case would be far more than any Egyptian skimming scam. Whilst truth is indeed a defence (or rather justification) you'd have to be absolutely sure that you could prove it. The onus would be on you to prove it and not the person bringing the case against you to prove their innocence. A few receipts and a hunch isn't going to do it. In any case, I assume that you aren't implying that everyone in the employ of the establishment is involved in the crime? In that case there is a defamation being committed against any of the employees. They are a small enough group of people that any on of them could safely argue that your accusations besmirched their reputation (defamation is the publication to a third party of a matter which, in all the circumstances, would be likely to affect a person adversely in the estimation of reasonable people generally). A trading body or company may also sue. As you're also damaging a commercial reputation there's another possible. As for who could be sued. I'm sure you're all pretty identifiable. You're mostly registered users for a start. But aside from you as individuals whoever "owns" the site would be classed as the being responsible for publication, as could the web-hosting company. As a forum thats moderated only after posting you may have recourse to a "live defence" - ie you couldn't have predicted the libel would take place. But you've only got a short window of time to address that. There's a case on record in which Demon were successfully sued in similar circumstances. I'd also be a bit careful about the way you are currently refering to the company concerned. There aren't many of them in East Dulwich (to mmy knowledge) so its not hard for a "reasonable person" to guess to what you're refering. Innuendo and implication are enough - you don't have to spell it out for it to be libellous. I'd be delighted to skim through McNae's Essential Law for Journalists if you require further information or examples of case law - it would certainly help my revision no end.

You are aware, I hope, that this thread is utterly libelous and each of you, the site owner and hosting company, could all be done by each of the *fuel supplier's name removed* employees, the *fuel supplier's name removed* garage franchisee and *fuel supplier's name removed*.

Is fusion really that bad? The staff are sometimes a bit dozy but its pretty cheap, and manages to offer some very good concession rate prices to boot. The pool's a bit ropey (but aren't most public pools in London under pressure). I joined in August and was pleasantly surprised at the gym. I've never been a member of a swanky one, so maybe that's why ... I've had great help from one of the instructors and I think its a fantastic resource to have on our doorstep. If you want to see manky deluxe you should try the fusion gym at the elephant ...