Via opendemocracy, this interesting piece on defamation costs worldwide:

Comparatively with other jurisdictions, England and Wales did not fare well in a recent Oxford University report called A Comparative Study of Costs in Defamation Proceedings Across Europe. The report was commissioned by the Daily Mail and found that CFAs are making defamation in England and Wales up to 140 times more costly than in the rest of Europe.

England and Wales was found to be three times more expensive than Ireland, which was the next most expensive jurisdiction. Ireland was still ten times more expensive than Italy, which came in third. England and Wales was also found to be the jurisdiction that awarded the most in damages in libel claims.

I still think that the volume of complaints about English and Welsh libel law is largely due to the fact that Anglophone researchers make comparisons with the USA; so the reference to comparison (!) with data(!) made me pause. The table on page 4 of the report is pretty awful SPSS chartjunk, but the gap, even in the non-conditional free agreement case, is immense.

Also note that the cost of defamation cases is only part of the deterrent effect for media — unless one considers costs to be so prohibitive that even where the probability of winning is very high (p>0.9) the expected benefit is negative, one also has to consider the available defences in each jurisdiction.

Also, I do wish they’d converted currencies using PPP…