Harcombe/Kendrick vs Associated Newspapers – The right-to-reply

Introduction

Thank you for your kind messages following the ‘Tuesday note’ (Ref 1). With the fallout from Tuesday, I’ve not had a chance to write much coverage of the Judgment (and I would want to check any legal points carefully before posting anything). However, there is only one thing on my mind at the moment and thus this week’s note is core to the case.

The safest content to share with you, without concern about getting legal points checked, is the first correspondence that I had as part of the case.

In the Judgment, I am the First Claimant (by virtue of alphabetical surname); Dr Malcolm Kendrick is the Second Claimant; Associated Newspapers are the First Defendant; and Mr Barney Calman, Health Editor of the Mail on Sunday, is the Second Defendant.

The first I heard of the planned articles was on Thursday 28th February, 2019 at 16.52 when the Second Defendant emailed me to say that “The Mail on Sunday plans to publish an article this weekend on growing concerns about claims you and a number of other individuals have publicly made about statins, the role of cholesterol in heart disease, and the allegations that researchers into the drugs are financially conflicted due to payments made to the organisations they work for, and so the evidence they provide about the effectiveness of these medications, and their side effects, are in some way untrustworthy.”