Tugendhat J slams Solicitors from Hell creator for 'abusing court process'
The country’s leading defamation judge Mr Justice Tugendhat has upheld a defamation claim against the ‘Solicitors from Hell’ website and told its creator Rick Kordowski he abused court process.
Tugendhat J said Kordowski had, through his defence of the defamation claim,abused the process of court by “seeking to cause the claimants to incur costs which he says they have no prospect of recovering from himself”.
Kordowski’s website claims to ‘name and shame’ underperforming lawyers by allowing consumers to comment publicly about the service they have received.
Wiltshire firm Awdry Bailey & Douglas and its head of family Adrian Bressington went to the High Court to get an injunction to force Kordowski to remove a client comment made on the site in September last year.
The firm also asked the court to consider restraining Kordowski’s site from repeating the defamatory comments or words similar and order it to publish an apology.
5RB barrister Victoria Jolliffe was instructed to act for the firm directly.
According to Tugendhat J’s judgment, when Awdry Bailey & Douglas originally complained about the comment Kordowski responded by referring to the website’s “administration and monitoring scheme”. This allows subscribers to the scheme to pay a one-off fee to have any comments against them removed.
Having refused to pay the fee, the firm filed particulars of its claim to the High Court. The defendant then entered his first defence, which, according to Tugendhat J, “consisted of a general denial” and a plea that the comments were not his.
A second defence was submitted to the court in response to the firm’s argument that the first submitted by Kordowski was inadequate. In his second witness statement Kordowski insisted the words published on his site were “true” and were in fact “fair (honest) comment”.
However, it then transpired that the author of the comment was not, as previously thought, a client of Awdry Bailey & Douglas, but rather the former husband of a client of the firm.
In December, the firm applied for the defence to be struck out and for assessment of damages.
Kordowski responded by adding a third defence, in which he submitted that the claimant had rejected a Part 36 offer. The judgment states: “The so-called offer provided that the claimants should give notice of discontinuance and agree to pay Mr Kordowski’s costs in the sum of £1,500 on the grounds that the claim was doomed to fail.”
In addition, Kordowski emphasised the defence of qualified privilege arguing that he had a “moral and/or social duty to inform others of the wrongdoing or negligence of some solicitors”.
However, Tugendhat J held that: “In these circumstances it’s plain and obvious that the defence or defences must be struck out. Whether taken together, or separately, none of the documents or witness statements served by Mr Kordowski disclose any reasonable ground for defending this claim.”
Ruling in favour of the firm he ordered Kordowski to remove the comments and restrained him from publishing any others words about the firm.
The website was launched in 2005, but it was not until 2009 that Kordowski began charging solicitors to take of aggrieved listings. According to his website the £299 fee provides “an escape route” for lawyers listed on the site and “encourages them not to spend the £30,000 it frequently costs to pursue a libel claim against Kordowski, who is the publisher of, but not the source of, the criticism listed”.
Kordowski, who appeared as a litigant in person, is hoping to appeal the decision.
Readers' comments (8)
Anonymous | 5-Apr-2011 5:01 pm
Simple answer is that Kordowski’s should set-up an off shore firm, in a country where rights to freedom of not curtailed by members of the legal industry looking after their own.
Say Sweden (rights protected under Yttrandefrihetsgrundlagen), host his website in Sweden and outsource the updating.
It's a lot cheaper than you think and freedom of expression in those countries will mean that the back scratching, self serving and basically evil legal industry here shall have no recourse.
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Lawyer | 6-Apr-2011 0:10 am
@ Anonymous
Wow! Have you had a bad experience with lawyers I wonder? Clearly something has upset you.
I think the point here is that people need to be protected from unjustified attacks on their professional and moral character. Kordowski seems to have been profiteering here by allowing and enabling people to make unjustified claims of malpractice.
What you suggest is merely a means to enable blackmail. The defamation laws in the UK have been under much scrutiny recently and thankfully for everyone (not just lawyers) some intelligent and thoughful people have been giving this thought.
Whatever any lawyer has done to you must have been severe for you to feel the need to trawl the legal press in order to make such comments to the legal world. I do hope you have found receonciliation.
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Ashley Balls | 6-Apr-2011 2:59 am
Hopefully there are lessons learned here: Always check the identify fo the person posting to the site and operate a moderation system. There will always be 'nutters' out there who want to have a go at lawyers - it shouldn't be that hard to weed out the genuine from the vexatious. After all most of us can cite circumstances first hand where lawyers/law firms have acted 'without due care and attention'. When it happens the determined client mostly goes elsewhere. For example, I have just seen a RTA 'victim' marginalised by a specialist firm where correspondence was 'lost' and the conduct of the partner in charge was dreadful yet on moving to another specialist firm a CFA agreement was completed in a trice, a Silk engaged and the contradictory witness statements speedily exposed. As with all professions ther are saints and sinners and in the above example the terminally lazy!
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Anonymous | 6-Apr-2011 1:40 pm
It sounds like this website is just a scam to make some cash for its owner and that's it.
If this website is supposed to be doing something worthy i.e. exposing 'bad lawyers' then how does payment of a fee of £299 that a lawyer can pay to remove criticisms of them justify that end?
Presumably the lawyers who have done something wrong will pay to have the comments about them removed, and the ones that haven't will unjustifiably suffer the consequences or take the website to court.
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Anonymous | 6-Apr-2011 4:04 pm
Hear hear Lawyer | 6-Apr-2011 0:10 am
Kordowski's argument that he had a “moral and/or social duty to inform others of the wrongdoing or negligence of some solicitors" is shown to be a complete farce when he's been charging said solicitors to remove negative comments!
Profiteering indeed.
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Anonymous | 6-Apr-2011 7:56 pm
'Solicitors From Hell' is most certainly in the 'Public Interest'
I have made comments about 4 firms I have dealt with. Not a single one of them has said anything, because all my comments are true. They dare not launch a legal action against me.
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Anonymous | 7-Apr-2011 2:44 am
publicly badmouth a lawyer or firm and then ask for money to take it down? sounds to me like good ol fashioned extortion.
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Anonymous | 10-Apr-2011 7:47 pm
Surely the point here is that the comment on the website was not made by a person who had been or was a client of the law firm, so any comments made by him were never going to be based on all the facts and circumstances (hearsay is probably what most of it was)
Secondly the defence that ths defendant had a “moral and/or social duty to inform others of the wrongdoing or negligence of some solicitors" is (as others above have commented) completely undermined by the option to pay a fee to have negative comments removed from the website.
I agree service such as the defendant claims to be providing would be a useful and beneficial tool for theose members of the public looking to choose a firm to represent them. However, it appears that the Defendant was not as interested in this public service as he was in making a few quid.
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